Thinking of building a Carlyle Lynch lathe (FWW #57)

I’ve been giving serious thought to building a lathe along the lines of Carlyle Lynch’s shown in FWW #57. It uses a lot of yellow-pine for the construction and that is not a problem for me. My issue is the headstock and tailstock spindles. I’m trying to understand what is needed.

The description says 1” seamless metal tube. Mr. Lynch says he cut the threads (8tpi) and reamed out to a #2MT. But he doesn’t say how thick the metal tube was to begin with. And, as I am calling around to local machine shops, folks are asking me what kind of metal tube do I want (I’m assuming hardness?), and what percentage of threads (or something like that).

So has anyone done something like this or have any idea what I should be telling folks? Also, if I had the tools, could I cut the threads myself and do the morse-tapering or is that best left to a machine shop. And finally, would one of these online machine shops be cheaper or easier to work with than a local operation?

Thanks in advance.

Oh, almost forgot. Yeah, if it turns out to be too much of a hassle, I may just keep saving my pennies and buy a lathe. I like doing this kind of stuff but fully realize sometimes, ya just gotta go retail.

Bill W

-- "You can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their back" -- Unknown