Not sure if any of you remember the Heavy 10 I did back last winter:



Well, I just finished this one.  I didn't paint it, but I tore it down to nothing, cleaned it up, and put it all back together with new wicks and built a pretty well rounded tool package to go with it.



I needed a new one to fill my free time.  This was on gov.deals and I snagged it for a song.



That one picture was all I had to go by.  No chucks, no tools, but at least it has a taper, thread dial and a collet draw bar.  We got to the school where the lathe lived yesterday and began devising a plan to get it out.  This is a tiny lathe, but 1,000 pounds is still 1,000 pounds.   I opened the cabinet door just to see if anything was inside that needed to be removed for the move, and



More on that later.

We had to get it out of the classroom through the far doorway, down a short hallway to the left, then down a sidewalk about 30 yards.  Not too bad at all.



I took an engine hoist which made it a piece of cake.



The school offered a pallet jack to whomever had to remove it, so we used it to roll the cabinet out to my trailer.  I bolted it to some 4x4's and used my trailer winch to slide it right up the ramps and then we were headed home. About as quick and easy as you can move a lathe without some real equipment. (not me in the pic, my dad)



More later from the garage...

In  for the progress.

I'll trade you my re-worked threaded spindle Heavy 10 for that long bed D1-4 spindle Heavy 10.

Someone came last Thursday and bought it.

I started digging through the contents that came in the cabinet of the green lathe.  I found a telescopic steady rest, 5 micrometer stops, 4 dog drive plates, a chuck back plate, bunches of live and dead centers, a cool little organization rack with drawers of lathe bits, two 4-jaw chucks, a turret style post for a 13" SB, a bunch of belt kits, and random wrenches.







I set the lathe back on the bench just to give it a once over.  All in all it isn't so bad.  The electronics bot a little wet on the drive home so I'll actually be tearing all this apart without ever finding out if it runs.  If something is cooked I'll just replace what is bad or swap motors and use a VFD.



I thought the carriage clamp was missing but the bolt was simply removed and dropped in the box of misc stuff.  The crossfeed had an entire turn of backlash but when I took the taper attachment off I realized the crossfeed nut was completely missing the bolt that secured it to the cross slide.    A bunch of other small random things, like the missing tailstock binding lever, but luckily all easy fixes and parts are easily available on eBay and though a guy on PM who bought all the extra parts when South Bend closed their plant.  There's normal wear on the bed but nothing life shattering.  One good chunk in the bed but its on the tailstock way and it is so close to the headstock that it doesn't matter. All in all it is going to make a fine garage lathe.  I've got it torn into sub-sections now and I'm cleaning the cabinet and bed.   Parts, accessories, and consumables are starting to show up in the mail.

Wow! You made out on the tooling and  accessories!

No shit

Side note: Are there adult education classes on machining?

This intrests me greatly

Yes, that's how machinists are made

Daytona State College
Has A class near me, cheap too for the knowledge. Considering it for a retirement gift to myself.....

I'm sure they are available around the country.

Also, The NRA offers a variety of Gunsmithing Classes wich include gunsmithing specific machining classes taught a locations in different parts of the country.

Many are two week classes taught at community colleges. They book up early though, especially the machining classes.

Cool thread

As mentioned in the NJ HTF that was my high school lathe. It worked just fine for me in 2007. Take good care of it.

I didn't do a very good job of updating this thread or taking pictures as I went, but the lathe is all done.  It is easy to get in a groove when you are working and it isn't always convenient to drag out a phone and take pictures when your hands have grease, oil or chips all over them. It wasn't much more than a simple break down, re-wick, clean, assemble.  I replaced a few parts along the way.  This is really just a marginal end so it doesn't archive incomplete.

Dirty gear box:



Clean gear box with new wicks:


The apron was pretty dirty.  Someone had packed it with grease instead of oil and the wicks were in terrible shape.  One gear had a small chip so I replaced it.



The only real wear I bumped into was the apron worm gear bushings.  You can see an old bushing compared to a much newer set I installed.


Cleaned the clutch up and replaced a thrust bearing that was missing some balls.


Everything else was in good shape:


Apron all done:



I put new wicks in the headstock and put everything back together with new shims:



Back gear installed and adjusted:


Buttoning everything back up:


Put new wicks in the forward/reverse tumbler and tailstock:



The original electronics didn't work so I gutted off all the magnetic push button start system and replaced it with a standard drum switch and a fused disconnect.

I cleaned up the taper attachment, put in a new crossfeed and compound nut and put everything back together:


Then I went shopping for some accessories that it didn't already have:
-Bison 3-jaw
-telescopic follow rest
-collet rack and collets
-AXA tool post with holders
-Jacob's rubber flex collet system
-spindle adapter
-a few different stud gears and a 3d printed metric transposing gear
-etc


Ready to make chips!

Awesome!

I'm Jealous!

Old machinery is awesome!  My brother recently restored and sold a Mazak Rex. 20hp motor. 30"x120" material capacity. Could swing 40" in the gap. They don't build them like that anymore.

That almost makes me miss my 9A, but not quite.  

I’ve always liked the pedestal leg style lathes. Not as practical as shelves or drawers, but stylish in their own way. I found this on eBay just inside the beltway and ran up there last night and grabbed it. Looks like crap but is nearly perfect! It’ll be something to piddle on during the winter. The tailstock and thread dial were removed for travel.

Attached File

Nice, you’re doingbGod’s work, metal gods that is.

I looked around for something in that kind of condition around here.   I’d either miss a nice one by hours like the littlevSheldon or find total wrecks sans all the parts like steady rests etc.    The 13” south bend with a big chunk of looseness in the headstock, machine covered in grinder dust in a one man artsy fab shop.  

I liked the push button start, but reaching over the machine did kind of scare me.

Now I wish I carved my name in your lathe when I had the chance.

It is going back to PA to live when the weather breaks, so maybe you still can.  

I have nothing to add other than this topic interests me... I have a long-bed LeBLond Dual-Drive (longest one I've ever seen) that has very little wear but unfortunately experienced some abuse. It's restoration is 90% complete, just waiting on replacemetn gears from a shop. I had to make plenty of bushings/sleeves, bolts, washers, spacers, clamp pieces, etc. I made a 2-piece adjustable nut for the cross-slide and machined a new screw. The tailstock is a bit worn and abused, I may bore it, hone it, and make a new quill for it but that's low priority. I want to get it togther and see how she works before tackling that.

It didn't come with much, but what it did come with was decent. A newish Bison 8" 3-jaw and a nice 10" cushman 4-jaw, as well as 2 steady-rests, one of which is the large through-bore heavy-duty version which is nearly impossible to find for the 15" lathes.

You’re still waiting for your gears? You mentioned those back when I got my service shift almost 2 years ago. What’s the hold up?

Yeah, long story short, problematic employee at gear shop had them backed up and then my gears got lost in the shuffle when righting all the wrongs after he was let go. Talked to the owner last month and he was surprised I was calling bc he thought he had all the wrongs righted but he said January & February are the slow months so he would get on them asap. He also said he'd take real good care of me on price... the reality is that I haven't had much time to work on it anyways. It's actually been close to 3 yrs now. I do have some projects lined up for the big girl when she's done. I've had a guy with a .50 barrel waiting for some work since shortly after I got the lathe and I  have a few projects.

Rather than make a new quill, you could always look into having the existing one hard-chromed and then reground.

Have you priced that service? I'll have just as much in the tail stock as I bought the lathe for.

Not in a while but I don't recall it being terribly high.

Last I checked hard-chrome and grind on a quill was almost $1k on a quill the size of mine (that included regrind of the MT4 bore as well). That still leaves the tail stock bore to be worked on.

FWIW, I  also priced having the bed blanchard ground on one of these before I bought mine. $10k... which is what pushed me to seek out a lathe that didn't need a bed grind. Those are pretty hard to find for cheap. I eventually found this abused one with broken headstock gears with only .0015" of bed wear at the worst point.  ETA, forgot to mention that I doubt it was ever used for threading, the half-nuts (irreplaceable) and lead-screw are pristine! I underestimated the cost of new gears ($5100 from Leblond Ltd) but did find a shop that would remake 1 cluster and repair the other (more complex) cluster for not to exceed $1200. But considering it's been almost 3 years now the shop owner said he would take good care of me on price... I also learned to scrape and rescraped my taper, cross-slide, compound, and tail stock base.