That way, when you drop a clamp on your foot, it doesn’t hurt as much…

I think I learned my lesson.

I year or so ago I bought a lathe for $30 from a garage sale.  It had a cast head/tail stock but the bed itself was just thin angle iron.  There was a lot of side-to-side movement when adjusting the tail stock and the whole thing vibrated and rattled like crazy when running it.  I’ve been using it to turn pens but due to its lack of squareness the pens never come out entirely round.

So I upgraded it.  With plywood…   I threw out the entire angle iron bed but salvaged the head/tail components.  I then made a new bed out of multiple layers of 3/4" plywood with a 4.5" track down the center for the tail stock to slide back and forth in.  I mounted the head/tail stock to small 4.5" wide pieces of plywood.  The head stock is screwed into the bed to make it completely rigid.  The tail stock is held in place with clamps which are easy to adjust and very secure.

The bed is three layers of 3/4" plywood + several strips on end (I-beam style) to force it flat.  You can just see that in the following picture. 

I turned my first pen on it last night and it worked great.  It’s much quieter than the former lathe because there is none of that metal-on-metal rattling.  The pen I turned is actually round and not oval like I was getting out of the old lathe!  Yay!