Way back in the day, I picked up an old, tiny wood lathe when I was picking up some other tools (the guy threw it into the lot).
Well, it's been sitting around for a few years, doing nothing (no bearings or prep on the bearings, fairly loose spindle, basically not really usable). I finally decided to turn it into a pen-turning micro lathe. I picked up a few bearings, measured, and started to work.
I used a boring head to bore out for the radial needle bearings, and the thrust bearings just fit in like expected.
I'm using a 4" router ER16 collet, and put the headstock onto the mill as my spindle, because an ER16 collet will hold the 7mm pen mandrel perfectly.
Yes, I don't have the pulley installed there. It's marked and the set screw divot has been bored on the spindle, but I still need to drill it out length-wise (so I can easily shorten the pen mandrel without adding spacers), and thread the back end (left handed m12x1.0 - the whole spindle is metric, I might as well do metric).
