Ever been in a project where, in order to do A, you must first do B; and to do B, you have to get C working; and to get C working, well: you need a lathe.

I have a lathe, classic American model, gift from a friend. Its status at my house for some years has been, “needs assembled”. And, since its original power source was a foot treadle, it also needed some fabrication and wiring to fit an electric motor as the power source. The required materiel was in the same set of boxes that held the main body of the lathe, and similarly, “needed asssembly”.

It happens that the motor expects three-phase 208V, which would have ruled it out at my house (which has only single-phase 240V), save that another box held a “variable frequency drive / inverter”.

After a lot of learning, I got this today: