| The Craftmans Shop > New from Old |
| Boxford back from the dead |
| << < (4/23) > >> |
| AdeV:
Tonight, the adventure continued... The lathe came apart surprisingly easily, considering how bad it looked. Then again, many of the fasteners were loose already, suggesting either it was thrown back together just to get rid; or maybe it was put back together badly, we'll never know. Removing the carriage just needed 4 cap-head screws removing, and it lifted straight off. The apron resisted a little bit, the half-nuts wouldn't quite open far enough; loosening the two bolts that holds the two halves in place gave me the extra few thou of wiggle room to get them shifted. I've not taken any photos of those bits yet, as I've not had a proper look at them. More on them another day. Removing the headstock had me scratching my head a bit... I could see the nuts easily enough, and I could just get a spanner onto the back one, but the one under the bed? How the hell would I reach that?! Turns out I didn't need to, it was already loose. :scratch: So, headstock removed, the leadscrew came off easily (it seems to be in reasonable condition; straight, at least. The bronze bearing at the headstock end is perfect; the one down by the tailstock was a bit dry and grubby, but doesn't seem to have much play. With a bit of luck, some light grease will be all they need. Inside the headstock there's a load of that moly grease, which has clearly been thrown to the outer casing and doesn't seem to be doing very much useful work. The shaft and pulleys have rust, but it looks superficial. Bonus! I found out why I couldn't move the lever on the front - there's some pins in the gear that engage with holes in the pulley (or vice versa), so obviously it has to be lined up before they'll go in. As soon as I spotted that, the back-gear drive snicked right in. Nice! After a little perfunctory cleaning, I did find the serial number: DEH3656/1105. I'm not sure what the 1105 signifies; the 3656 number would put the build date, at a guess, somewhere in early 1952. Unfortunately, the lathes.co.uk website stops at #2297 in January 1951, has 3 years of "confused numbering" (including 1950!), and resumes at 4346 in January 1953. That does, however, mean this is a very early machine, and therefore worthy of my best efforts I think. Although that's pretty much the end of the good news.... |
| AdeV:
The next step was to test for twist. Now... I don't have a single proper level/flat surface in my garage, but I found a bit of concrete floor to sit the bed on which didn't obviously rock. Using the machinists level, we can clearly see that there's a twist right where the headstock sits. My guess is this happened when it was dropped; I'm now reasonably sure that it's fallen over backwards, landing on the pulley drive plate. More on that momentarily. So... what to do about that? I'm open to ideas. I may try shimming the headstock when I refit it to try to level it with respect to the rest of the bed (which seems to run straight, as best as I can tell). Or maybe just mounting the headstock on it and clamping the bed down to to a good solid flat surface will allow it to straighten out? Any ideas gratefully received. If I got the photos in the right order (they're out of sequence slightly), then the measurements are from the tailstock to the headstock in approximately 1/5th intervals. +/- half an imperial brick (3/5ths of a metric brick). |
| AdeV:
So, setting aside the big lumpy bits for a moment, I turned my attention to the motor/countershaft plate. First, remove the pulley. The mangled piece of metal is the "bracket" that sort of clamped the pulleys down at the rear (and also sort of did nothing - very strange). It's hard to do justice to the awfulness of the welding on that "bracket". That part is definitely for the bin. The motor is a bog standard Hoover 1/3rd horsepower unit. It's fairly dinged and the bearings are rough. I have another similar motor I may substitute; I'm not sure how to go about restoring a motor yet. The original(?) switch is still in place, albeit I'm sure it's been re-wired. The light (now removed) was on a completely separate plug, and looks like it was added later, although it does look very similar to the light on other Boxford lathes. So.. I took a few pictures of the wrecked motor/pulley plate... you can see where someone's tried to TIG weld it, made a complete horlicks, then resorted to using steel straps. |
| AdeV:
Suddenly.... DISASTER! :zap: :zap: :zap: While attempting to separate the countershaft plate from the foot casting, there was a squishy POP noise, and now the foot casting has completely blown up :Doh: :( Seems there's some crazy strong spring in there somewhere pushing the two parts apart. This would normally help tension the motor belt - but in this case, has blown the front off the foot instead. And I still can't figure out how the shaft is supposed to come out... Please see the very last picture, which is a close-up of what appears to be the works (but how?). I'll probably have to cut the shaft; it's bent anyway, and I can't get the two parts apart without releasing it somehow. Either that, or the knurled nut-like thing on the front may be something to do with it? It looks like it's got cut-outs for a pin hook spanner. The shaft MUST come out through the front face (as it can't pass through the collar with the knurling on it), but how does one detach it from whatever's doing the springing inside the plate? I is confuzed! Anyway, that's enough damage for one night. I'll take a fresh look at it another day - I have a pin spanner somewhere I could use to try to loosen it, but I need to find some way of clamping down what's left of the foot casting without wrecking it any more (even though it's already in a million pieces). |
| tom osselton:
Looks like a bolt holding onto a lever |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |