Hi guys
I have been busy in the shop the last week or so and I had a week just devoted to modding one of my lathes. I don’t have a set of change gears so I cannot use the lead screw for turning and I have a center steady that I need bearings installed other than the steel heads supplied as this particular factory supplied unit tears up my fixtures.
Being as cheap as I am I rummaged around the shop and come up with some Ali plate, bearings I got from an auction and I sneaked in the office and stole the wife’s paper shredding machine.

Now I was going to do a nice pictorial on the steady rest because I do not have a working mill at present, and all the milling I did was done on the lathe, I was hoping to show some new people how good a lathe can mill. But I dropped the camera in the shop and broke the plastic case. Irony is its not my camera it was a loaner while mine is being repaired so now I have two repair bills so these projects cost me more in the long run. Oh well life goes on.
Anyways here are the results of my labor




The shredder motor and gear unit is the complete drive just the shredding bars are removed but I had to modify a old two gear housing from an Atlas saddle I had laying around to get it reduced to about 11rpm to a 74 tooth gear direct on the screw, that’s the housing with the hole in it made of that Zymack stuff. BTW it’s a reversible drive as well.
Although it ran fine the motor seamed intermittent, sparks were spitting from the brushes and it grained my cut so I achieved nothing, But!!!!!!! I have some mystery stainless which I turned and it came out like glass and every other lathe I own will not touch it.
Still I relegated it to the scrap heap as a failure.
The steady rest is a success and the bearings run like a charm
Bogs, I understand about the band width, I deleted the first post. Now I got the pics from Photobucket but they are still large hope this is not screwing up the site as well. If its still a problem I need to understand how to post the pics correctly.