Is it my turn? Anything to do with lathes, mills and other shop tools

When I was an apprentice the guys in the machine shop told me that back in the early days of WW2 they were so desperate for workers that they shopped out small parts to retired guys with home workshops. Then they asked the outworkers if they needed anything to help them work more efficiently.
Requests for tungsten carbide tools were the usual but there was one guy who wrote in to say that as he was getting on in age his legs weren't as strong as they used to be so could he have an electric motor for his lathe?
 
Here is an old one.
 

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They made them tough in the old days!
My Grandfather made a treadle wood lathe for my Uncle who was about 12 at the time.
My Uncle was a lifetime wood turner and I still have a few fine items around the house that he made.


Feeling a bit flush I splashed out on a DRO for the mill.
It arrived with no fitting instructions but found some on the interweb after I was about 1/2 way through.
So had to do a bit of rework to get the parallel and true set to spec. After the 700 is done it will be time for new bearings and seals in the gearbox of the mill.
I found out too late that you need to flush and clean the gearboxes of these Chinese made mills . They can have casting sand left in them at assembly time. The top seal is gone and she leaks a fair bit as you can see by the staining.
Luckily I did know about this when I got the lathe up and running.
2018_1004fireplace0024.JPG
 
Yeah, those imports can be pretty good, but they do need some attention before really getting used. I replaced the bearings on my Induma mill, but it has a similar lube set up to a step pully bridgeport. So fill it up and it'll help lube the part as you cut.
 
Working on building another 2x72 belt grinder and needed to make an adapter to mount the drive wheel to the treadmill motor. 2" steel bar, bore a 35mm hole in one end and turn the other end down to a 5/8ths inch shaft. WAY too much for my iddy-biddy benchtop lathe. It's a trooper, but I wouldn't live long enough to get it done at .005 per pass...

So I went to see an acquaintance of mine from my volunteer firefighter days. I knew he had a mid-sized lathe, thought maybe I could rent some lathe time from him.

Well, he now has half a dozen lathes, only 2 of which see any use to speak off. I was welcome to fire up any of them, OR...

seneca.jpg


For $50 I could take this one home with me. Old Seneca from a line-shaft shop converted to motor drive. All the bearings seem tight, the ways are in good shape and it came with all the essential pieces-parts: tailstock, 3 jaw chuck, tool post, threading change gears, live center, dead center and Jacobs chuck.

I purdy near sprained my wrist whipping out my wallet. AND he helped me load it up on a trailer, move it to my shop, unload and position it!

I know where I'm going to be the rest of this week...
 
Yes, it had been uh..."engineered" to use as a wood lathe.

Disassembling/cleaning/inspecting/lubricating now. So far, the only bad news is that the nut for the compound feed screw is missing as is the lock for the compound angle. The lock won't be hard to fix, might have to scramble a little to figure out how the compound feed is supposed to work.

The 3 jaw is a little ugly, but servicable. Badly mistimed, one jaw about 1/4 inch off when closed. I've got it apart cleaning and lubing and I can retime it when I put it back together.

I fibbed about the live center, what I thought was a live center was a wood turning spur. Fortunately, it's a #2 Morse taper tailstock same as my widdle one so I can use the one I have.
 
If it don't run true, check out CME chucks on Amazon. I put a 6" one on my Atlas 2yrs. ago and I'm still tickled pink with it.
While I'm thinking of it..... what size throw and bed ya got there? Kinda hard to tell from the pic....
 
Yes, it's listed as a 10x36 in the old catalogs.

Discovered two more problems with it.

The chuck is wonky. About .003 runout at the spindle end which is rough but probably workable. Chucked up a piece of round stock and indicated as close to the jaws as I could and got more like .030 runout. Not good. Not good at all.

Also, the catalog specs (found on Vintage Machinery dot com) lists spindle speeds at 18-340 RPM, and countershaft speeds at 175 RPM. It has a 1725 RPM motor on it and a 2:1 pulley reduction so the countershaft is running at more like 860 RPM :yikes:.

I can cure some of that with different pulleys, but I can't get to the needed 10:1 reasonably so I guess a countershaft is in order.

Not gonna mess with that until I figure out if I can fix the runout problem. A new chuck is NOT my first choice but may have to go there if I can find one with the odd-ball thread that doesn't require a second mortgage.
 
An idea? do some serious clean up of the threads mating surface if you haven't already. Put the face plate on the grizzly (a cam lock head) came up with "excessive" runout. did a good clean up of mounting surfaces and it came right in to true.
Search youtube for truing up a 3-jaw chuck lots of helpful tips.
Keep the story going as you work!
 
My 3 jaw is out a bit so I put a piece of paper between one jaw and the work piece to get it closer to perfect. No shame in using paper or thin card as shims. If you cannot solve the problem then you could use an independent 4 jaw chuck, just takes a minute or so longer to set up your work.
 
gggGary said:
what collet taper does the head have?
Click to expand...

Spindle nose is supposed to be a 1-7/16 12TPI. Tailstock is a Morse #2 taper.

The spindle nose is ALSO Morse #2 which I did not realize until you asked and I went out and checked. Thanks!

When I spotted that, I tapped a dead center into the spindle and ran the tailstock up with a live center in it to check relative centers. As near as I can tell with the Mark I eyeball, they're dead on. Runout at the end of the dead center in the spindle bore was ~ .002 so my problem is in the chuck. It may very well be a jaw boogered up as mentioned, I'll check that tomorrow.
 

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