I acquired the lathe due to one of those lucky encounters that happen to good, clean living people every now and then. But I still don't know why it happened to me.
One sunday I walked into the club house just in time to hear one of the members saying that he had this old lathe if anyone was interested. On enquiring about the price he said it free to a good home.
I have a few more pictures some where, but only one is handy. I'll post others when I find which folder I hid them on. (Bad habit of mine).
Anthony,
If you expand the pic you can just make out the lever. It is a locking lever for the counter shaft to stop it accidentally sliding into mesh.
As for that gap. Yes, no doubt it will come in handy. But the down side is that with a thin job mounted on the face - plate I have quite a lot of overhang on the tool. Guess I'll have to make a kind of thick spacer to bring the face plate out a bit.
There's always something.
It's in very good condition except for that hideous silver paint job. Also if you look closely at the new picture you will see that the large wheel on the counter - shaft has been brazed up at some time in the past.
The bed 'V's are hardly marked at all, same for the leadscrew. So it probably hasn't done much work. And they are also quite wide with a very large surface area. I suspect that it was quite a high quality machine for it's day.
Generally the whole thing is quite 'chunky' and it has plenty of meat on it's bones.
There are a few things that I want to do to it. Firstly to add a reduction gear and a wheel at the end of the leadscrew to make it more manageable. This will entail a bit of hand felting as the bed is rather large to take down to work and fit to the milling machine.
But I agree, I do seem to have a very good machine here; and for the best price. So I must have done some thing right.
Dave.