A few years ago I took delivery of my biggest lathe ever, a VB36. This green monster arrived in a special trailer, with a special hoist for positioning it over the bolts I had prepared. As is usually the case inside the UK it was the MD of the company himself who delivered it. Once installed it was swiftly put to the test by an excited new owner churning out shavings all over the floor.

VB36 with the optional tailstock

When I began turning in the 1970s I took advice and bought a Graduate. This being the heaviest craft lathe around in those days. The VB is a definite step in the heavy direction from there. It does not have the easy spindle facility that the Graduate has, being designed as a face plate lathe, with a bed as an extra, rather than as a dual function machine. The bed attachment is aimed to supply tailstock support for those projects that a faceplate may struggle to support. This it does well enough. It can also be used for spindle turning and though it lacks the Graduate's fluid ease of use in this department it makes up for it with vastly increased diameter capacity. It is as a faceplate lathe that this machine was designed. It is as a faceplate lathe that this machine excels, it is as a faceplate lathe that I acquired it, and it is here that I shall review my experience.

One of the features of this lathe is not just its great weight and stability but the aesthetic appeal of the whole design. This may seem like a small point but who, amongst those designing and making works of beauty wants to live with an ugly machine? I find it a positive pleasure that both my earlier Graduate and now my VB36 have pleasant curves where square box structures would have sufficed.

In making my three new videos, I chose to use the VB for the bowl projects. Even the small ones, because the VB is a pleasure to work on, a pleasure to look at, and a pleasure to recommend. Some of the projects in the second video are large or multi-centered and using the VB ensured that accusations of unsafely stretching the machinery would not be raised.

Union Graduate lathe

In order to achieve the huge capacity that this lathe has, the usual bed and tool post arrangement has been put aside in favor of a sliding beam. This wedges into place between the lower and upper portions of the lathe by expanding on a tapering slide by the turn of a handle. Like any other unfamiliar piece of equipment, this means the user has to adjust his habits and several turns on the handle are required where the Graduate needs just one. Yet the handle is never stiff, as the Graduate's locking device becomes if it is not regularly cleaned and maintained, and the reward is that larger capacity.

The smoothness of the shaft is as pleasing as the quietness of the whole machine. Granted I am used to quiet machines from living with Graduates, but the VB is no exception in spite of its larger size.

I have always been suspicious of the ball bearings in the Graduate. Turning ridiculously large bowls on it like 28"x9" and wondering why it trembled, I replaced the bearings at five yearly intervals at the slightest hint of whine. The VB has no ball bearings. The shaft runs plain in a cast sleeve, the porosity of which retains the hi-tech lubricant so that its hard chromed and polished surface never meets with the casting at all. This struck me immediately as common sense. All those moving parts in a ball bearing are bound to allow more tremble than a smooth bearing. Beyond common sense, two other things convinced me of this. In search of better bearings for my Graduate I had asked a specialist. "Would roller bearings be better?" Roller bearings it seems are about longevity and high loading, not about low vibration. Ball bearings allow less vibration than rollers and hi precision ball bearings less again. "Could I have some of those then please?" I'd have had to wait a week while he got them from the aircraft industry and then they would be eight times the price. "I'll stick with the standard bearings thank you". So vibration in ball bearings is an acknowledged phenomenon.

Next I began to notice that when working on spindles held with a dead tail center, the tool was many times less likely to rattle and screech than on work held with a live tail center. Obviously I am not talking about burn and squeal at the tail itself but about how the work responds to the tool. I would not now attempt extra long stair spindles using a live center. This is down to the balls again. Thus the idea of plain shaft bearings for my new lathe appealed. The fact that Rolls Royce uses them for their airplane engines because balls couldn't take the strain I only learned later on.

Over these two years I have used the VB for everything. In order to find out what it does well I have turned minute components for musical instruments, paper-thin lampshades, and massive bowls and hollow forms. I've also turned eccentric sculptures with a swing diameter of up to four feet, as well as little boxes, dining plates, newel posts and more. From all of that I have formed a conclusion.
I like this lathe.

Another thing about the VB36 that I like is the controls. The controls, which include an on/off footswitch and a ten turn speed control, give a surety and ease greater than any other lathe I have used. The bottom speed of 50rpm is too slow to turn on, but it makes applying oil to a larger bowl a quicker task. The top speed of 2600rpm makes small and fiddly work easy. Ten full turns on the potentiometer that adjusts the speed is so much safer. On other lathes I have had some nasty near accidents by catching my hand on the speed control knob and having the lathe suddenly accelerate. With ten turns between slow and fast this doesn't happen. Other manufacturers please take note. Your machines are more dangerous than need be. A further pleasurable advantage of a ten-turn knob is this. When changing speed my attention wants to remain on the work. My concentration is with the process of making, of getting that curve right or producing the goods. I do not want to break off this concentration to fiddle with the machine, any more than a hiker wants to be stopping to fiddle with his boots. With a single turn knob I have to be pretty careful how far I turn that knob lest the machine start to whip around at a frightening speed or even to start to rattle and roll. With a ten-turn potentiometer I can keep my concentration on the work and just twiddle a bit till I see the result I want. Having both types in the workshop has really rubbed this one in for me.

Tobias Kaye Videos
Available from videos@tobiasKaye.co.uk in Europe or from www.Woodchuckers.com in North America. See a description of his videos.