A carriage stop is a must have tool for a metal lathe, it allows the operator to accurately turn features at know distances from a reference point.
Making a carriage stop for my lathe, whats one of my first milling projects when I got into machining 10 years ago. While my original design has served me well for many years, I’ve decided to make some design tweaks, that will hopefully improve it. The following video is the first in what will be a short series, documenting the construction of my new stop.
In the second installment of this series I machine all the critical features of the stop. I demonstrate how to accurately measure the depth of a v grove as well as a little trick to get around not having a DRO.
In the final video of the series, I finish machining the stop, only to find out I won’t be able to use the thumb screws i purchased after all. After recovering from the thumb screw issue, i demonstrate how I lap parts, and how the stop functions when in use. Now that it’s all said an done, I think this was a good project for me to break in the new mill with, as it let me learn what the limits of the machine are.