Turner's Pole Lathe with Puppets, Screw Centre and Treadle (Moxon, 1680)

"The Lathe is described in Plate 12. A. This Machine is so vulgarly known..."

Set up two legs about 2 ft 10 in (86 cm) high, plumb, each with a tenon on top as thick as the gap you want between the two cheeks. Lay a cheek each side of the tenons, level, and fix them: pinned, or better with an iron bolt whose square neck sits in a square hole in the near cheek, drawn up by a nut. Brace legs and cheeks to the floor and walls so nothing trembles.

Make two (or two or three pairs of) square puppets, strong rather than weak and as short as your work allows: the centres must stand a little more than half the work's diameter above the cheeks. Give each a tenon at the foot that slides in the gap between the cheeks, with a mortise through it below the cheeks for a tapering wedge, driven with a mallet to clamp the puppet down.

Near the top of one puppet fix a strong iron pike with a tempered steel point. Through the other fit an iron screw in a nut in the puppet, also with a steel point, both points in one straight line facing each other. Put an iron handle 7-8 in long with a knob at each end through the screw head. Cut the puppets to square shoulders just below the pikes to carry the rest.

Make the rest a square piece 1-1.5 in thick, 2-2.5 in broad, a little longer than the gap between the puppets. Hang a horn tip down on the outside of the right-hand puppet near the top, filled with oil, with a wooden cover and button carrying an iron wire that reaches nearly to the bottom, to oil the centre holes.

Make a treadle about 2.5 in broad, 1 in thick and 3 ft (up to 4 ft) long. Nail its back end to the floor with a piece of leather, 1-1.5 ft behind the lathe and midway between the legs, so the front reaches 1.5-2 ft past the front of the lathe. Cut a square notch 1.5 in wide and 2 in long in the far end for winding the string. Fix an iron pin about 0.5 in thick, standing 1.5-2 in up, in the middle; under the cheeks fix a cross-treadle with a row of holes 2-3 in apart to take the pin.

Use a fir pole, thick or thin to suit the work; if it is too stiff, thin its upper and under sides with a draw-knife. Pin the thick end to a ceiling timber with one nail so it pivots. About a foot away nail two cheeks to the joists with a batten across their foot to carry the pole. Run the string from the pole's thin end, round the work, to the treadle.

From Joseph Moxon, **Mechanick Exercises**, Numb. X, Turning (1680), pp. 176-185 and Plate 12 (checked on the archive.org scan mechanickexercis00moxo). He gives no sizes for cheeks, puppets or pole; metric and the wood choices are ours.