old redneck
Member
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2012
- Messages
- 22
- Reaction score
- 35
I picked up one of these recently for almost nothing, so I figured that my son and I would try to get it going. The lathe came to me pretty rusty, tailstock frozen, and generations of dirt dobber mud imbedded into every orafice. No tooling except a jacobs chuck mounted on the headstock spindle,not even a center. It passed thru a couple people who did nothing to it but let it sit. The original owner's Son in law has all the tooling for it in a craftsman tool box "somewhere" in his shed and he was also my brother officer during a combat deployment. When I get time to drive a few towns over, he will not care if I dismantle the place to find it. Meanwhile we needed a few basics.
After making all the tailstock except the casting and locking lever, adjusting the bearings, gibbs, cleaning the bed we got serious. All the reading I have done indicates that the spindle is treaded 1/2-20, not this one. This one is 5/8-16?? (Unified National Special Thread) to fit the drill chuck with it. No problem, I just threaded the end of the tailstock ram to fit it which solved one problem. A simple center was made with a light push fit into the tailstock except the last .10 inch is .001 over to make it snug but removable. The drive dog was made from a casting that my son machined, except for the internal single point threading. We put a center with an press fit into the nose of the drive dog and cut the 60 degree in place with the compound. After a few cuts and adjustments to the tailstock our test cuts have less than .0005 taper, but still a little rough.
A couple things that I want to point out that will be evident in the photos. During the tailstock rebuild I made a nut that prevents me from losing the tailstock wrench (I hate losing that), threaded the nose for direct fit of the jacobs chuck and made a bolt on replacement for a broken boss for one of the adjustment screws.
So far we are pleased with the results. Next I really need to scare up some missing gears for power feed, our hands got really tired. I hope this is not too long and rambling.
After making all the tailstock except the casting and locking lever, adjusting the bearings, gibbs, cleaning the bed we got serious. All the reading I have done indicates that the spindle is treaded 1/2-20, not this one. This one is 5/8-16?? (Unified National Special Thread) to fit the drill chuck with it. No problem, I just threaded the end of the tailstock ram to fit it which solved one problem. A simple center was made with a light push fit into the tailstock except the last .10 inch is .001 over to make it snug but removable. The drive dog was made from a casting that my son machined, except for the internal single point threading. We put a center with an press fit into the nose of the drive dog and cut the 60 degree in place with the compound. After a few cuts and adjustments to the tailstock our test cuts have less than .0005 taper, but still a little rough.
A couple things that I want to point out that will be evident in the photos. During the tailstock rebuild I made a nut that prevents me from losing the tailstock wrench (I hate losing that), threaded the nose for direct fit of the jacobs chuck and made a bolt on replacement for a broken boss for one of the adjustment screws.
So far we are pleased with the results. Next I really need to scare up some missing gears for power feed, our hands got really tired. I hope this is not too long and rambling.
