1950 South bend lathe restoration.

[Festus]

I didn’t look at your link until now. That’s the belts I used. I had to buy two of them to have enough. I tried the serpentine belt and didn’t have much luck splicing it together. If you took apart your headstock it would work good. It did grip good.

 

[krypto]

Your lathe is 70+ years old so you really need to pull the spindle and replace the spindle felts. When the spindle is out you can install a serpentine belt so you don't have to worry about a belt splice. My lathe is UMD so unfortunately that wasn't an option for me.

The lathe spindle is far more important than fresh paint.

 

[Niels Abildgaard]

Has anyone tried those belts that link together? Something like this: Vibration-Free Link Belt.

I did and never looked back

Fenner Powertwist

Another thing is that the shown Boxford is a clone of SouthBends.
I put it on a piece of tombstone to stiffen the whole setup.
You can see that Boxford has some machined flats under midle of bed from machinig.
This means that lathe is stands very rigid on six points instead of four and does that make
a difference?
If the southbend have same underside of bed feature You can lift it to Hardinge /Schaulin class very cheaply

Very Rigid Lathe

 

[Poppy Ott]

I too have a 10" Logan and replaced the leather belt with a poly. Are you running yours on the rib side or flat side? I flipped mine over and am running on the flat side. Better grip with less tension and very quiet.

when I made the change I didn’t know which side would be best to use, or if it would work at all. Would the belt just slip on the smooth pulley surfaces? I decided to try rib side first and see what happened. That worked so well right from the start that I never tried the flat side.

 

[gartof]

when I made the change I didn’t know which side would be best to use, or if it would work at all. Would the belt just slip on the smooth pulley surfaces? I decided to try rib side first and see what happened. That worked so well right from the start that I never tried the flat side.

Same experience for me tons of friction a great update
Gary

 

[nautilus29]

I have the apron and saddle fully assembled. Sadly the previous owner did some heavy modifications to the handle side of the cross slide lead screw. I did my best to fix their handi work. I replaced the cross slide brass nut also. To my surprise the cross slide only has .005" backlash, and the compound only has .003.

On both I machined the wear out of the handle end. I've been pleasantly surprised by the shape of this 70 year old mill so far!