I was looking at this small golf ball sized dictator mortar on e-bay yesterday and was ready to bid on it when I thought , why not put the money into a lathe or milling machine and build one of these my self? I've seen alot of you fellows who have lathes or milling machines that allow you to machine your own barrels so I figured I'm still gonna work on my full sized hollow mortar but in the mean time why not do as alot of you have done and start smaller and build a small sized replica?
I've got tons of tools , welders, plazma cutter etc etc but I don't have a lathe or milling machine. Can you give me an idea of what kind of machine is good for boring out a barrel and turning one as I've seen several of you do on this site. I'd like to focus on making as big a dictator mortar replica as possible but don't know much if anything about how big of material/bar stock or whatever these lathes or milling machines can handle or what kind of machine is good to use. To start off with I would like to make one at least able to shoot a soda can sized ball and then work up to much bigger.
I know very little about lathes. What are the terms or whatever you call it that tell how big of material a lathe can turn or how big of stock it can handle?
I have a friend who has a fairly large old lathe I might be able to buy?? but don't know if it's an appropriate type or not?? There also is a guy near me who has two large industrial looking milling machines sitting in the yard just doing nothing. Whether they could work for this , I don't know? I'm gonna start looking for lathes. Any advise??
Scott
