Conover Lathe

[Bodger]

I've had a Conover Lathe for quite a while...most of my turning has been small stuff like chair and table legs.  I have it set up to turn 8 foot blanks and it does well on posts 6x6.  I have a client that wants about 20 pieces 10"x10" 10 and 12 feet long.  They will be solid...anybody done anything like that?  It should be no problem to extend the bed to handle the length but the weight is what I'm wondering about. 

[metalspinner]

If you're concerned with the instability of your lathe, you can turn the posts in two seperate sections to make turning it less exciting.  If you put the joint at a turned feature, it will never be seen.

[low_48]

My first thought is to bolt the extended lathe to a wall in the shop. You might want build some steady rests from roller blade wheels to help stabilize it once you get it round. I would use a power hand plane, or sawmill to take off the corners before turning, cause it's going to take quite a while to turn. A 2' tool rest will also be nice. Good luck!

[Don_Papenburg]

I built a 12' lathe  and a track to run my router on I can run 20" stock  The router  makes quick work of turning squares into rounds.  Heavy stuff needs a hoist to install/remove.

[D._Frederick]

A green square that big will weigh 300 + pounds. My concern is how you will hold that much weight on the spindals, I would think that you will need something that you could lag-screw to the timbers to take all the forces of that big a mass spinning.

[Don_Papenburg]

I used a faceplate with dead centers on each end of my lathe and screwed the stock to that.