Parts Painting

Here are some of the first parts that I had gotten cleaned up and ready for refinishing. For the smaller parts I find it easiest to just paint these with a small artists brush by hand. There are so many nooks and crannys and places that need to be masked on some of them that its just easier this way. I'm going to be spraying the larger pieces outside.

Among the parts included here are the leveling feet plates, door hinges, compound and tool rest, and the main apron casting.

There is still a lot more cleaning and tearing down going on, but I find it helps keep my motivation going if I can move onto refinishing some pieces already. It makes me feel like I'm making progress.

3 Jaw Chuck

My first attempt at buying a chuck didn't work out too well. I forgot to make sure it was a plain back and it ended up having integral threads. So I had to return it. My second attempt worked out well.

For a pretty good price I picked up a nice Burnerd 5" 3 jaw universal chuck on eBay. It's a plain back, and it had a 1 1/2" x 8 adapter plate already on it.  I took it all apart and cleaned out the old chips and grease and lubed it all up with way oil.

Besides some wear on the ring and a few chipped gear teeth on the pinions it is in good shape. Luckily the chipped teeth don't affect the function as far as I can tell. 

Since the 1-1/2" x 8 backing plate is smaller than the 1-3/4" x 8 that the Clausing has I believe I might be able to re-bore, and re-thread the plate. That way I don't have to buy another backing plate. 

I did buy a brand new backing plate with the correct nose thread from AMTOOLS but I think I'm going to use that on a new 4 jaw chuck when I get one. 

Side Bench

This was a quick side project. The back wall of my shed has an angled portion where the alley wraps around  the back. The lathe fits right up against the angled portion of the wall. I wanted to fill in the small triangular area with a work bench that is roughly the same height as the lathe chip tray.

It's a very simple build. A few 2x4's and a piece of plywood all screwed together. It's screwed to the studs of the shed with timberlock screws. I then mounted my big Crafstman vise to the table. It's not the most accessible bench, but it makes use of an otherwise wasted space. The vise was my grandfather's and every time I get to use one of his tools it puts a smile on my face.

Compound Issues

The compound and the tool post slide both had some issues I had to deal with. The first thing that came up on dis-assembly of these parts was that the end of the compound slide was pretty well chewed up.  I can only assume that someone had the tool post slide back far enough to expose this area and had run it into the chuck. For some reason someone had drilled a hole into this area and inserted a pin. The end effect was to keep the tool post slide from extending over this chewed up area. Why? I have no idea. The problem was that with this pin installed, I could not remove the tool post slide. I chose to cut the pin off with an abrasive disc in my angle grinder. This way at least the rest of the pin was filling in the hole at the chewy end. I tried to cut it off with a bit left over to file down but I ended up not being as clean as I wanted. I need more patience.  However I was finally able to remove the tool post slide.

One of the first things I noticed even on the pictures on eBay was that the tool post slide was evidently brazed back together at some point. With my limited machining knowledge I can only come up with one scenario in which it would be possible to break the slide at this location. I think someone over-tightened the tool post which put too much pressure at the T slot and the cast iron snapped. It was brazed together, however none of the excess was ever machined off. I decided to grind off the majority of the excess with my angle grinder. Then I went to my stationary belt sander to dress the rest, going slowly and checking for square the entire way. It may not be as precise as it should have been but I don't have a mill yet.

How will these issues affect the overall accuracy of the lathe when I get it running? I have no idea. I could imagine the chewy edge of the compound not supporting the tool slide as well as possible, which could result in some flex.

I'm not sure how a slightly out of square tool slide might affect things either. I'd imagine maybe some special set ups that use the sides for reference might suffer. Until I start learning how to use the machine I probably won't know. Can I fix these things later? Probably. But for now it's on to the next mess...