Home Made Brass Woodruff Key
4,366 views · Published 24 April 2015 · 3:52 · Indexed 21 October 2026
Channel: Gary Truesdale · 2015 · Howto & Style
I lost a woodruff key for an antique lathe. I tried to buy a replacement online but they're all a little off and don't quite fit. I liked the idea of a brass key and I decided to take a crack at machining my own. I had some 1/8 inch brass around so the most critical dimension, the width was already set. To turn the outside diameter and machine the key to the proper height I built two fixtures. One fixture to turn the blanks in a lathe, and one fixture to part the round blanks into two keys on the bandsaw. This worked out well. Now I can machine keys quickly. I am using one of these keys in the countershaft and one in the tailstock of my 12 inch Atlas lathe. Now if I could just get rid of that groove in the middle.
