Freshly poured Aluminium. The piece in the sand on the right is just a straight log.
Here it is 1-5/8" diameter. I used a piece of exhaust pipe for the the "pattern".
I shortened the piece and have machined, drilled, counterbored and am now parting off to length.
Arhh, finally, test assembly, fits nice in the hand, turns nicely and I can stop turning it anywhere and it won't roll forward or back. The v belt is off and the gear train disengaged. The spindle handle can be used when doing threading right up to a shoulder. The lowest speed of the lathe is 100RPM so on coarser threads you don't have much time to release the belt tensioner and wind out the tool so you don't hit the shoulder. It's not too bad when doing fine threads. Anyway with the handle the threading can be done up to shoulder without any grief, just a bit more manual labour.
A view from above and back. The spindle turning handle is only put on as needed, the lathe is not run with it attached.
Just getting ready for final assembly, Lightly greased the M10x1.5 stainless socket head bolt so it turns nicely in the handle. As you can see the bolt fits down inside the handle. After screwing the bolt into the arm I adjusted the bolt to just have a bit of end float on the handle then loctited the lock nut on the other side and tightened it murder tight, well not quite murder tight. The handle turns nicely.
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