This project requires a mill to square up and face a block of metal. The holes in the cube can then be bored in a lathe with a four-jaw chuck or bored on the mill. This is not a step-by-step tutorial, but the author does give some useful tips, such as how to square up a cube.

Ralph Patterson, who can be found on the Yahoo 7x12 mini-lathe group, has drawn up plans for more than 20 very useful mini-lathe modifications and accessories and graciously made them available to everyone. These plans are in .PDF files. They are very well drawn and in most cases Ralph has included pictures of the completed project and he often includes a material/parts list. Most of the plans are in the two large .zip files. You'll also find a .doc file here with descriptions of each project.

This tiny steam engine was designed by Elmer Verberg and it has a fly-wheel about the size of a dime, so finding the metal to make it shouldn't be hard or expensive. If you explore the rest of the web site you'll find out more about the web site owner's workshop, the old gasoline engines he restores and the small steam engines that he's made.

Very nicely designed ball and radius turner with plans available in .jpg or .dxf format. It can probably be made to fit most lathes by modifying the mounting plate.

This project is just for fun. Also, check out the rest of Frank Ford's web site. It's one of our favorites.

This article by Jim Sapp describes a simple and inexpensive way of making a worm wheel using a home-made hob made out of a tap or a threaded rod. The finished set of worm gears won't be as good as a commercially produced product, but they will be suitable for many applications. The author uses them for his home-made telescopes.

Frank Ford made a gage from an old machinist's square for setting the height of his lathe bits.

This site discusses Chinese-made mini-lathes from a UK/European perspective. You'll find a discussion about the differences between the lathes sold by different vendors; along with a lot of tweaks and modifications that you can make.

A simple way to ensure a tap gets started straight. The author's web site also has some good information and other projects for machinists.

Dave Goodfellow has ten or so nice steam engine designs with plans that are suitable for a beginner or intermediate machinist. They're located about half way down the page.

A collection of steam engine plans provided by the County College of Morris Engineering Tech Department.

Paul Bussieres' free Visual Basic calculator for the mini-lathe will calculate gear combinations for a metric or English leadscrew. Simply specify the desired pitch and it will produce a list of gear combinations that will work. If you have trouble understanding the gear diagram then look at the gear chart located on your lathe or in your manual. This program has a French and English interface.

A nice beginner's lathe project with step-by-step instructions.

A useful shop tool easily made out of 1/2-inch galvanized pipe for about $20.

No plans, just a picture showing a simple easy to make tool for setting the height of a lathe bit

Probably the most popular and most useful web site about the Chinese-made mini-lathe and mini-mills. You'll find extensive information about the equipment's capabilities, recommendations about accessories, operating tips, lots of tweaks and modifications to make them run better, and a lot more.

Alan J Munday created this very useful, FREE, easy to use, suite of calculators and information for machinists and engineers. There's too much to list here, but it includes a cutting speed and feed calculator that is one of the best we've seen. It also includes thread cutting data, a spring designer, a unit converter, information for setting up tapers, a sine bar and gauge block calculator, sheet metal bending information and calculator, a gear cutting calculator, and MUCH more. Both metric and English units are supported. This is the core program and there is an upgrade that adds even more capabilities to it.

The machines, tooling and accessories of the author's well equipped shop are beautifully photographed and described. You'll find lots of useful modifications, suggestions and ideas here.

No plans, but more than enough information to make an optical punch very inexpensively out of some metal and a 1/2" acrylic rod.