A bowl made on a manual lathe.
A manual lathe is a woodworking device that rotates a stock to allow a craftsman to chisel and create products with perfect radial symmetry. Examples of such products include baseball bats and candle holders. The term is generalized to any machine that does not employ a computer to control the movement of a chisel or other tools with numerical coordinates. Most modern lathes for individual hobbyists turn wood with variable speed electric motors. While there are lathes for metalworking and other materials, most hobbyists work with less demanding materials such as wood and bone.
A wood lathe can be used to make baseball bats.
A piece of wood is attached to both ends of the device; this defines the axis of rotation. The tailstock end rotates freely, while the headstock end is a spindle whose rotation can be controlled. A tool rest, usually on tracks parallel to the rotating wood, allows the craftsman to hold a sharp chisel or gouge with a steady hand while he removes the material along the desired shape. The lathe also performs sanding, drilling, and other rotation-assisted tasks.
Before electric motors, steam engines, and water wheels, lathes were manually operated. On a centralized industrial scale, the manual lathe was normally operated by two people. The master cut while an apprentice handled the spindle by hand. There is evidence that such devices were used in ancient Egypt.
On the distributed scale of craftsmanship, the manual lathe has been adapted to be operated by a single individual with various mechanisms that allow the spindle to rotate. An ancient method involved twisting a bowstring around the end of the spindle so that reciprocating back and forth motion of the bow rotated the spindle alternately. An improvement on this was the spring mast vise. The rope wound around the spindle was connected above the head to a rigidly bent rod and below to a pedal. By depressing the pedal, thus turning the spindle, both hands were free to work the wood.
There are hobbyists, primarily interested in antique reproductions and historical re-enactments, who build true hand lathes. Most hobbyists will buy the type powered by an electric motor. They are available as portable workbench models as well as stand-alone models.
Among the manual lathes available, there are several specialized types, as well as some notable common techniques. Most appliances accommodate the rotating front panel, in which the wood is only clamped to the rotating head, and instead of cutting perpendicular to its rotation, shapes such as cups and serving bowls are cut axially so they rotate. Shapes that are not uniformly radially symmetrical can also be created by eccentric turning: reassembling and working a single part with multiple axial rotations. A twin-spindle manual lathe can lay out and reproduce a master shape similar to the way door keys are copied.