Wood Lathe Tool Rest Rebuild / Repair

This is how I rebuilt the tool rest on my wood lathe.  The original casting was to be blunt a piss poor effort that had ridiculously thin side walls and it smashed to pieces in less than 24 hours of getting the lathe going, the first time i used the rest in its fully extended position the force was just to great and the thin walled casting snapped like a twig.

It had been a hassle to get the lathe shipped to me in N, Ireland from the mainland and i decided to repair the tool rest rather than go through the hassle of sending part of the lathe back, which would have cost a fortune in shipping fees

I rebuilt the tool rest from a piece of channel iron and kept the socket part of the casting and secured it to the channel iron with set screws. I also welded ends onto the channel iron and drilled them so the original cam lock mechanism could be used.  Unfortunately this was in my pre Instructable days and i have no record of how it was done.

Unfortunately the casting was not the only thing that was substandard, the locking cam turned out to be very soft indeed and bent due to the pressure and it finally reached the stage where there was no more threads left on the bolt to take up the slack from the bowed cam.  rebuilding an of center cam would prove difficult as I don't have access to a metal lathe with a 4 jaw chuck and then there would be the tempering that would be needed to stop it from bending again. So i decided to go back to basics and have a simple bolt affair, it takes a bit longer to set the tool rest but it holds much better than the cam lock ever did.

I had access to a friends milling machine so i decided to used that as i had never got to use one before, I could have done a good enough job with an angle grinder and some files, but then why give up an opportunity to use a milling machine and have it done to a better standard.

Its slightly slower to set this new tool rest up but it does hold much more solidly than the cam lock ever did.

This Ible will only be of use to the few who have this type of tool rest and have been unlucky enough to have it break. Or it may be of use for those who are building a wood lathe.

Thanks for looking.

PS.  sorry about the grainy pictures, I got a new camera phone and it does not have a built in flash and the shed lighting is not yet up to spec.