An Epic Road Trip

8th June 2024

For Sale, Dave Arnold's Super Cler Ornamental Lathe with Rose Engine a 21st Century Hybrid.

Last spring I had borrowed a portable home-built Rose Engine lathe from a friend to try it out and to learn about ornamental turning. I quite enjoyed using his machine and was watching on line for any Rose Engine lathes for sale. While looking on a FB Ornamental Turners page, I came across a recently posted add for a Hybrid Rose Engine lathe, I quickly showed Alison the add and she responded with quick send him a DM. Well, that wasn't the response I expected so I quickly sent a message of interest and intent to the seller as per Alison's suggestion. Next thing I know I am planning a road trip to New Albany, Indiana. I called my brother William who lives nearby to say I'm off on a 10,000 klm road trip. Well being a good brother and worried about me travelling alone he said he would happily accompany me. So, we were off, 8,200 kilometers, 12 States, 10 days, 4 ferries, 2 Countries, 1 Super Cler Hybrid Ornamental Lathe with Rose Engine built by Dave Arnold.

Our first overnight stop was in Sprague, Washington a mostly closed and boarded up old town. Its hard to find accomodations when you look at a map and say 10 hours of driving puts us here, so that’s where we stay.

Sprague, WA

I would like to have driven this one back home! 

You know you are out of Canada when…Somewhere along Interstate 90

After 5 days on the road, we arrived in New Albany, Indiana which is just on the edge of the border with Kentucky. This is the lathe that the late Dave Arnold built, he called it a Super Cler Ornamental Lathe with Rose Engine a 21st Century Hybrid. To give you a brief background in 2000 Dave had bought a Rose Engine lathe built by Paul Cler, one of 26 lathes Paul built. In 2008 or so Dave sold that lathe and all its accessories and went to see Paul to buy another lathe to use in his build. Paul at the time was about 86 yrs and no longer building lathes. Dave spent a few days with Paul in his basement workshop and together they found some new spare parts, enough to build some of the headstock. Dave had already spent a fair amount of time sourcing linear slides, motors and other parts to build his new lathe and now he had to turn a spindle to fit the headstock parts Paul did have. The result of Daves dedication and skill is shown in the above photo taken in 2009. We purchased this lathe from Daves son, disassembled and packaged up for the trip back home to Pender Island B.C.

The lathe is totaly dissassembled and loaded into the truck for the return trip home.

 

A quick stop for some site seeing in North Dakota

Painted Canyon.

In June of 2024 our Rose Engine lathe is re assembled in its new home here on Pender Island. The Ornamental Rose Engine Turning journey begins.