Adapt a 6mm Drill Mop Mandril to Suit a Nova Series Chuck.

This is how I made a Mandrill adapter to use a 6mm polishing mop mandrill in a Nova series chuck on my wood lathe.

A few weeks ago I bought a 6mm mandril and a 100mm polishing mop in the pound shop, unfortunately the mandrill was to narrow a diameter for my nova chuck to grip, so i needed to make an adapter.

I was going to use a friends metal lathe to do this project but i figured out that i could use the nova chuck to make the adapter from a 12mm cup square bolt. and use the taper chuck fitted in the tail stock to drill the hole.

I cut the threads of the bolt and squared the ends on the linisher.

The bolt was then fitted in the chuck and a 3mm drill was fitted in the chuck in the tail stock, the drill was set in the chuck so only about 3 mm was protruding from the jaws, with the lathe at top speed a small pilot hole was drilled a few mm deep.

The holes where then drilled out with a 5, 6 and 6.5mm drill dit to a depth of about 1 1/2" this was a nice neat fiot for the mandril.

the inside of the hole was coated with solder paste, and the assembly was clamped before being heated by a blow torch until the solder melted.  Any fine adjustment was done before the solder cooled enough to set. An engineering friend had demonstrated how strong standard soft solder could be when used to hold steel to steel.

the excess solder was removed by using a large flat file with the lathe at its lowest speed using the tool rest as a support. the head of the bolt was then polished up it a shine with a fine abrasive paper.

The mop was the fitted to the mandrill and it was spun up to top speed to remove loose threads, then bees wax was rubbed into the mop before use.

I found a plastic jar in the recycling that the whole assembly fits into, along with the bees wax blocks, this will be used to keep the polishing mop clean and dust free when not in use.


Thanks for looking and I hope you like this idea.