Home / 2019 / November

Lidl Parkside Lathe

For those who don’t live in the EU, there’s a chain of shops here called Lidl who do your normal groceries – veg, meat, frozen goods, dairy, soft drinks, biscuits, cereals, alcohol, baby stuff and cleaning stuff and some pharmaceuticals, but they also have “the magic aisle” where they do an impression of aliexpress every week with varying themes. This week, it was DIY and… well…

So, some expectations. This thing cost €80. It is not a mini-lathe 😀 It is not going to be keeping Record Power execs up at night. The Carpentry Store has nothing to worry about here.

BTW, you can get the full manual here.

However, I expect it to be underpowered enough that I can’t completely remove my fingers with it; and to have just about enough power and capacity to turn a replacement chisel handle and maybe some drawer pulls if I’m lucky.… Read the rest

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One down…

Two angle blocks at the base of the front legs, two metal reinforcement banding straps at the top of the front legs, and plywood panels at the back and sides and…

Calling that done. There’s no more racking, so it’s fine to use the bandsaw for light work from there, there’s more clearance for the sander’s spindle so it’s easier to get that in and out of the cart than it was on the older one, and it’s about four centimetres less deep than the last cart, which is why you can now see the corner of the vice leg on the bench…

That’s a success, though you’ll notice the plywood under the wheels there. There’s a bit of 6mm MDF on the floor at the back which keeps the timber there off the floorboards because they weren’t exactly in the best of condition, but it’s not deep enough for both the front and back wheels of the cart to be on the MDF.… Read the rest

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