Home Machinist's Journal

Today I needed a spring, so I made one. Turned down a piece of stock in the lathe for the mandrel and with some 0.035" music wire I had my spring. The first spring was not so great. The spring back was greater than I figured so the OD of the spring was oversize (I needed 0.250"). I took another 10 thou off the mandrel and all was good. I just moved the carriage along and music wire with my hand. And turned the headstock spindle with my other hand. No power was used. I eyeballed the spring wind spacing. When I laid the wire down on the mandrel under tension, it basically stayed in place after done, The spacing did not change much. Just the OD a bit.

spring1a.jpg
spring1b.jpg

I like your wire tension setup. Not bad!  

A few years ago (back during our time at H-M) I wound a couple of springs in a similar manner but I used a piece of steel with a hole in it as the guide and two small pieces of wood using a C-clamp to provide tension. Clamped the 'tensioner' onto the wire near one end, but leaving a couple of inches of stick-out. Slid it through the steel block, made a 90° bend on it and poked it into a cross hole in the mandrel. Moved the tensioner up against the guide block. I figured out what I needed for TPI and set that with the change gears, then turned the chuck by hand. I had to fiddle with it a bit and made a couple of test springs before I got it right. Getting a good winding took more tension on the wire than I expected.

Once again, nice result!