Concrete lathes are far from a new idea. During WW1, the US needed more lathes than we had. It could take years for a cast iron casting to age enough sitting outside before you could do the final machining to actually build a lathe.

So concrete was tried as a substitute for cast iron. It has some good properties, it cures quickly, is rigid enough, and dampens vibrations pretty well. The downsides are you require a physically larger machine that takes up more floor space, and they are difficult to move making resale difficult, and they don’t last as long in that usage, so they aren’t cheaper in the long run.

Concrete lathes had their day and quickly died out to be forgotten.

That is heckin cool

Man, that’s cool! Concrete is a heck of a lot cheaper than epoxy granite resin and is perfectly suitable for a low-precision tool like this lathe.

I do hope that he finds a way to shield those bearings. You really don’t want metal chips or sawdust making its way in there. Any damage they sustain will cause runout, which will lead to increased chatter and parts that are out of spec. Plus, a matching pair of tapered roller bearings can be quite expensive!

EDIT: to be clear, I mean no disrespect when I say low-precision. Not every lathe needs to have slides and handwheels. I have a little Sherline lathe that I’ve used like this in the past (using gravers, not tools in a tool holder). It’s great to quickly turn something or to put nice decorative details on a part. Precision is possible with a lathe like this, but it requires fairly strenuous effort.

Nice, but be sure to check out the Gingery lathe (and the whole series) before building - Gingery did a few things that would improve this if done. (and this does a few things that would improve what Gingery did)

This is the ball vise fella, right?

Dude is a legend

Holy shit