I have been slowly making a  lathe steady. There are lots of examples on YouTube some very fancy and some strange. I opted for a plywood construction as the material is easy to work with. The plywood is 19 mm thick. Using a piece of 6 mm MDF I created a full size template. Resting the MDF on the bed of the lathe and using a pointed live centre on the drive side of the lathe the exact centre of the template was created. This takes some of the guess work out of making a full size template.

Two concentric circles were drawn from this centre creating  a ring  about 40 mm in size.  Two rings were glued together making the lathe steady 38 mm thick.  The lathe steady uses three roller blade wheels which are in contact with the material being turned. The three roller blade wheels are spaced equally around the ring and. They are supported by three stays that have slots allowing adjustment for materials of differing thickness.

The base was further reinforced  by glueing extra pieces of plywood to the base creating a 76 mm wide base. A bolt with metal washer attaches the steady to the lathe.