A 2270 lb jigsaw puzzle or Assembling a 10x50 Republic Lagun Knee Mill

[moya034]

Hello all! I've recently finished my lathe renovation project (will post a thread about that soon) so it is now to move on to the next project on the list...

Back in March of 2011 I purchased a Republic Lagun 10x50 FTV-2 knee mill from a nice gentleman who answered a wanted ad on craigslist. I purchased the machine for just a small premium over scrap value. The machine did not see alot of use. You can still see the original flaking marks on the ways if you remove the surface rust.

The only real catch was the machine was taken apart in prep for paint. While I had some reservations about this it was a hard deal to pass up and I was confident in the seller and the machine. Also, Republic Lagun is still a company in business and still offering support and parts for this machine.

Here's an image I snapped after unloading it off the truck. I put everything except the milling head on pallets for easy movement with a pallet jack. I really dig putting stuff on pallets in the shop. Makes life easy.

Fast forward a couple years. A number of circumstances kept me out of the shop but here we are, back with a gusto!

After thinking about the logistics of actually putting this together, I was concerned about the safety and easy of assembling the very heavy parts. I considered renting a fork lift or gantry crane. I was concerned about the cost of the fork lift, and I was unable to locate a gantry crane for rental. I was very very lucky to find a good unit on craigslist for $400, which made me quite happy.

Just this past weekend I reorganized the garage and assmebled the crane. The block and tackle made easy work of doing this by myself. (The shop is an old carriage house with an attic and a hole in the floor.)

This weekend I plan to de-rust all the castings and empty the boxes of parts and get them laid out and ready for assembly. I do NOT plan to paint the machine... I think it is OK as is.

I do have the manual from Lagun that has lots of good info and should be very useful.

I plan to call Lagun and ask their recommendation, but I figured I'll ask here in case anyone familiar with lubes or this machine knows the answer... The manual calls for a grease and lists several, but all seem to be out of production. Finding info to cross reference it hasn't been easy:

Shell OSSAGOL-V-GRIS
Mobil DORCIA-150
B.P. Energol BL-1200
Esso Surret-Fluid-30-F
DOW Corning MOLYKOTE-165-X

I did send an email off to Mobil tech support and they said the replacement for DORCIA-150 is Mobiltac 375 NC... Good luck finding that for purchase!

Stay tuned. I'll be posting updates and pics as progress occurs.

 

[Mitchg07261995]

good luck, cant wait to see more

 

[Wizard69]

Very interesting!

Personal opinion here but I suspect you will regret not painting some parts of the machine. At the very least do the machine base or main casting.

In any event it looks like you are well on your way to a very nice machine.

 

[jwcnc1911]

Are you doing any work to the ways? Use caution when putting the saddle back on the base. It can be very difficult to get the table square to the base. I had some trouble with an older Bridgeport.

Good luck, that's a JOB!

 

[moya034]

Mitchg07261995,
Glad you are interested. I can't wait to make chips with it.

Wizard69,
While the paint is not perfect, it is plenty good enough to protect the iron and it is not chipping off. I have too many projects waiting in the wind to take the time to do what I would consider a proper paint job. I'm the kind of guy that either does it right, or not at all. (Well, MOST of the time, at least.)

While my lathe looks awesome with it's pretty new paint job, and I'm VERY proud of it, It was such an enormous amount of work, I wish I had just left the old paint be and moved on to making chips faster. In fact, one of the reasons the lathe project sat around for 3 years before I got back to it was due to the amount of work in the paint job that I did not anticipate when I first decided to do it.

jwcnc1911,
Not sure what you mean by work on the ways. They are in good enough condition that they should need no scraping. The original flaking marks are still visible. All they should need is de-rusting. For that I will be using naval jelly, scotchbrite, solvents, Marvel's Mystery Oil (I love that stuff!), and lots of elbow grease.

If you care to share them in more detail, I would be very interested in hearing more about your experiences in getting everything square and true with your Bridgeport.

Also, I assume by your username that you are a 1911 fan. I'm a Kimber guy myself.