Heavy turning!

[Andy B]

One of my 'projects' has been to bring very sad 8" rotary table back to life.
It came from a training school having had its top milled into numerous times and the 'fingers' for the holding down bolt at one end of the base were broken off (apprentice hadn't had his 3 Shredded Wheat for breakfast and dropped it?).
It cost me nothing and being a solid bit of British cast iron, it was worth saving.
There was sufficient depth in the top to skim approx 2mm off it to clean up. However, due to the length and weight, there was no way it could be held in a chuck so it needed a mandrel to run between centres. I got it running true to 0.0005".
Pictures show the setup in my 280VS lathe. It's the biggest job I've done so far on this lathe, but it coped really easily without any hint of chatter.
The base was milled out (Denford Senior E-type mill) and 2 pieces of steel let in. I'm in the process of scraping the base and table flat.