Building a New Lathe

[Manxmodder]

Looking good  I guess the process of drilling and countersinking the ways and tapping for the screwed anchor fixings must be coming soon.....OZ.

[vtsteam]

Thanks Oz.  Been avoiding it, and having fun with the tailstock instead, since I have to lug the bed down to the cold big shop to drill and countersink on the mill, and make the screw plugs there on the Craftsman (if I don't just go with regular slotted screws).

Been warming up a little and the snow is shrinking and ice on the path is breaking up. I guess tomorrow I'll work on it. Thanks for the nudge! 

[Manxmodder]

Steve, for what it's worth I'll share a little experience of my own with a similar fixing solution that I used on a homemade bench drill table.

The drill in question came to me without a table or support arm,so a round table was crafted from a 14" lorry engine flywheel.

The flywheel/table is fixed through the original holes where it was fixed to the crankshaft to a rotatable hub which is mounted into a boss on the support arm.

Firstly I countersunk the holes on the flywheel and used stock countersunk allen screws but it wasn't long before I realised that the hex key recesses were troughs for swarf to accumulate,and a nuisance constantly needing cleaning out so as not to interfere with the flush facing for the vice to set on.

It wasn't very long until I replaced the allen screws with some homemade flush topped ones and no more swarf trap problems since.

Just thought maybe you might encounter a similar problem when traversing the saddle along the bed if swarf gets in the screw slots/heads.......OZ.

[vtsteam]

Oz, here you go.... Figured I'd better photograph them now before scraping, because I think they're probably going to be invisible after that:

[Manxmodder]

Spot on job  . Did you make the fasteners from barstock,or use of the shelf screws?.....OZ.

[vtsteam]

Screws, Oz, countersunk to just have the slot come a hair above flush. These were wide head types. I don't know if I'll go back to scraping just now -- I feel like attacking the carriage pattern next......

[vtsteam]

Wrong...............

started scraping again.

[RobWilson]

  Looking canny Steve 


Any way I reckon your bed is way over engineered ,,,,,,,,,,,,, I mean using all that steel in all     


Now this is a lathe bed 



Notice the steel/cast iron ways set into the timber 



Just love the shape of those castings .


Rob

[vtsteam]

I was just going to say, Rob, they really had a sense of beauty in everything they did. I imagine that when those timbers were new, the lathe was quite a sight. Just the clean lines of the pulley (not to mention the major castings) alone draws my eye.

Just up the Interstate from me in windsor Vermont at the Precision Museum they have a granite bed lathe. It's not as cleaned up as the one above, and not a clear photo, but you can see in the handwheel casting the same love of detail -- not to mention thin section casting ability!

There was also a cast concrete lathe in Model Egineer, made after the war, I don't remember which issue, but I thought it was really cool.

[vtsteam]

I don't know if it's of interest to anybody, but here's what it looks like a little after beginning scraping. The blue is the high areas that need to be scraped. The left end is a little low also -- you can see the ends are un-colored. The total amount to be scraped until finish is probably only a few thousandths, but it's a long process getting there.  There's a lot of blue in this pass because I had just rolled the blue on the plate to start with.

[Joe d]

Don't know if it's of interest to anybody else, but I'm still following along and learning things...
never tried scraping yet, keep up with the tutorial, please!

Cheers, Joe

[tom osselton]

Yep keep it coming one day I'll scrape more than my knee  I have found dad's scraper though it's just carbide braised to a old file. I'm thinking about a muller for casting season.

[vtsteam]

Thanks Joe, I'm definitely learning from yours!

I'm far from expert at this but luckily, the difference between being really good at it and not so good is, I think, just how quickly you get the results you want. I bet a professional can get to the level I reach in a quarter the time, and probably carries on from there.

Anyway, the things I find helps are pretty simple. Don't go lightly to start with, dig in. There is a great temptation to scrape lightly to start and take every last bit of blue off. That's kind of finicky, and it means many, many more rubs and scrapes.

I'm a lot more ruthless now than I was at the start of the bed scraping. There are a lot of good videos for scraping, and one of them shows a pro with a scraper taking strokes that raise smoke each time!

Towards the end, you can start to get more careful and use lighter pressure. I find this time around that at the end of the day today I was a lot further along with the lathe ways than I was after 3 days on the lathe bed.
 
Stoning the work to remove burrs is important, as well as frequent sharpening (at least with a HSS scraper). Also being extremely careful not to get any tiny chips or debris clinging to the work when bringing it over to rub on the surface plate. Any  speck on the plate ruins the rub. Bits of scraping get under the bed each time you work on it. You have to brush the bench top off, and the work each time before rubbing it. But basically it's just a lot of time and repetition. Oh, imperative to wear gloves -- at least for me. I also frequently clean the plate with kerosene and re-ink.

Here's how far I got at the end of the day today. Quite a lot of progress for me compared to last go around:

[vtsteam]

Tom  .  I bet that scraper works really well. And I wish I had a muller. Some day -- another project on the long list.

[Zadig]

How many passes do you estimate it will take to get the top level? Nice colour on the blue, what brand are you using? Smashing thread.

[Kjelle]

Steve, I have been watching people over at PM Practical Machinist) rescraping old lathes (and mills), but this is a whole new ballgame! There is this guy named Richard King that holds scraping classes who gives advice there too... (He went to Sweden last year (I think) and held a class! No I didn't go.)

I'm more than impressed by your work, I quietly watching, keep it up!!

Kjelle

[philf]

Hi Steve,

Looking good so far. 

How will you get the underside of the ways parallel to your nice flat top?

Phil.

[RobWilson]

Just up the Interstate from me in windsor Vermont at the Precision Museum they have a granite bed lathe. It's not as cleaned up as the one above, and not a clear photo, but you can see in the handwheel casting the same love of detail -- not to mention thin section casting ability!

Most interesting Steve , I had a look on there web site and it looks a good place to visit  ,the wife has been badgering me to go to the USA so  I may have to go and have a look see in person   . 


Rob

[S. Heslop]

I don't know if it's of interest to anybody

It's definitely of interest to me.

[vtsteam]

How many passes do you estimate it will take to get the top level? Nice colour on the blue, what brand are you using? Smashing thread.

Hi Zadig, thanks! I have no idea how long it will take me to get the top done. I just go at it until it is. The blue I'm using is an old tube of Prussian blue oil paint. I used to use Dykem Hi-Spot but it ran out. This isn't much different. The bluing is a little thick in the photo -- rolling it out thinner on the surface plate is better for detail, but I was just starting out.

Kjelle cheers! I saw a video where Mr. King is instructing a class on Youtube. He seems like a very nice guy -- and knowledgable, too.

Phil thanks ! I will have to do the bottom and all sides, too. And the carriage slides and tailstock. And the headstock too because it needs to slide for boring, initially. Everything that slides has to be scraped.

Rob a visit with you would be fantastic!  It's not a huge museum like that amazing German one you had pics of, but it is nice  restored mill buildong and has some interesting machines and displays. This area of New England (the Connecticut River valley) was once a great center of machining in the U.S. Now all but completely gone. But it was once called "The Precision Valley".

Simon, I'm really glad! 

[Zadig]

I've just ordered a new tube of Dykem's blue. The tube I have used for decades is as old as I am and I'm in my fifties, it buggers me up trying to squeeze it out of the tube. It's biggest problem is that the witness is a little pale.

[vtsteam]

Zadig, the worst thing about all these tubes is that they themselves are painted, and sometimes a tiny flake of the paint comes off onto my surface plate when I squeeze the tube, unoticed. Then do a rub, and find it messed everything up, and have to clean the whole plate again and start over. Any bit of debris is enough to support the ways high -- even the thickness of a flake of paint.

I noticed in the pro video I watched that he used a black spotting compound. I wonder what that was? It looked like it worked a lot better.

Also some pre-rub orange stuff that he called "orange". No idea what those were, but it would be great to try an alternative to the Dykem Hi Spot and artist Prussian artist colors. I think they could be improved upon -- and probably are.

Anyway, back to work....

[Joe d]

Steve

If you want black, try some of this stuff...

http://www.kokopelliproducts.com/inlet.html

I've used it for inlay mortising on wood, works good!

Joe

[vtsteam]

Since people  want to see these pics -- earlier today, progress, getting closer:

[vtsteam]

And at the end of the day, it was finished. That was better than last time. two days isn't too bad. but i think it was partly due to the fact that it had a good bed to start with.