Lathework: A Complete Course (Workshop Practice)

From the book."The main aim of this book is to take the newcomer to turning from the novice stage through to an experienced beginner, achieving this by providing a range of projects each one primarily illustrating a particular process. Finally the book concludes with two guide advanced projects that will put to test the skills learnt in earlier chapters. "The book does just that. I found this book to be extremely helpful. In regard to other reviews, yes it is in metric dimensions. The author suggests using metric measuring equipment vs converting to imperial dimensions. I'm up in the air about that but I have completed two of the projects so far and I am working my way through the book.The part about checking your lathe to see if it turns parts parallel (and if it doesn't, how to dial it in) are worth the price of the book.Project #1 Having a scriber to mark out parts is great. Plus YOU made it.I now have a set of identical cylinderical squares. Thanks to project #2.Project #3 now Has my tail stock aligned within .0005" to the bore of my headstock.I really like Harold Hall's books. And I like the simple way he does things. My favorite part of the hobby is making tooling so his books are right up my alley. It's very rewarding.I can not recommend his books highly enough along with The Amatures Lathe by L H Sparey. They can really get your mind going about the endless possibilities of what you can make at home.[...]Harold also has a web site with his articles and some project drawings but the ones in the book can only be found in his books.

I have only just started reading it, so I only have only few comments so far:The book is all in metric. For a general introduction sold in an international market, I would expect a book to include both metric and imperial. If not, then a warning should be boldly stated. Having said that, I need to get comfortable with metric (hopefully, my backwards country will switch to metric sometime this century). And like the intro says, most things can be done with metric indicators and mics, so the imperial dials on my lathe shouldn't bother me too much.The drawings do not have tolerances on them. I always heard that a mechanical drawing is not complete without tolerances. It is a very important concept to learn. However, they DO talk about it in the text, but learning to read them from a drawing is important, too.Of the two more complicated "graduation" projects, one of them is a drill spindle to do auxiliary drilling on a part held in the lathe. I would be surprised if more than 5% of the readers of an introductory book would have a need for this. Maybe never need it. And, to use it requires skills not taught in this book - you need to build the entire superstructure to hold it (not described in the book), and buy and wire up an electric motor. End result is that 50% of the final two projects are probably not useful to the majority of users. And then the other one, I can buy much easier than go through the trouble of making it. But, I'll probably do it as an introduction to Morse and Jacobs tapers.Almost all of the earlier projects are things that will be useful around the shop, like machinist jacks, threading die holders, etc. I will very like make at least 80% of the projects in the book.It is well written and organized. Well illustrated with many drawings and many photographs. The language and style is clear and comfortable and easy to understand.I also got the Mill book 35. I'll review that when I get to it.

Nicely written lite book to bring you back to speed.

This was just what I was looking for. I am learning and improving my knowledge and skill on a small Smithy machine tool. This starts with some easy(er) projects to build skills and make useful tools. The projects get more and more involved. There is a good text description of each project and recommendations on changes / improvements to make.It took forever to get here but it was worth the wait.

Lathework-a COMPLETE course is a misnomer. The author claims his books are for novices, then barely mentions some subjects. One example, "Fly Cutting" gets part of 1 sentence... no setup information, no techniques, no approaches, no cutter types, no cut depths, no speeds, no NOTHING. Hardly sufficient detail for a novice who likely doesn't even know what a fly cutter is. This is one of 3 books I ordered by the same author that suffer from similar problems... the provided information seems pretty good, where there is any to be found, but there isn't enough to be found. Also, he often fails to follow his own suggestions, so how good are they?

Written for beginners

Well written easy to use reference.

The funny thing is that the author's book on milling (Milling: A Complete Course) has the same style but got very good reviews. If you know absolutely nothing about the lathe and aren't mechanically inclined then, yes, you might be disappointed with this book.I found it to be good, because it has a nice progression of projects to build skills and they're all useful.