Messing around with the spindle bearings in my lathe!

[John Hill]

My little Adept lathe as received:-


DSCN0294 by aardvark_akubra, on Flickr
It looks good but the bearing in the head are really, really slack.  


The bearings are simply borings in the casting so with nothing to loose I tried a little bodge, just because I could!

IMGP9177 by aardvark_akubra, on Flickr
First off strip the lathe (that took 45 seconds!) then clean the head bearings and heat with the heat gun.




Now I am putting solder in the bearings.
 
IMGP9178 by aardvark_akubra, on Flickr
 You might have heard that cast iron cant be soldered, well, it cant be soldered easily but it can be done and one of the methods is to rub the surface with copper while applying the solder.  While the heat guns keeps the metal hot I added solder via a little soldering iron giving the surface a generous rub as I did so. Eventually most of the bores showed solder adhering to them.  Sorry, no picture of that my camera is not good enough to 'see' inside there.



Now I am going to trim the inside of the bores,  I realised the drill was not going to be such a good idea and eventually carefully trimmed it out by hand.

IMGP9179 by aardvark_akubra, on Flickr

The bores felt 'good' but not perfect, so I made up a rig to give the little lathe a try out!

IMGP9191 by aardvark_akubra, on Flickr


There we have it folks, a little tapered pin turned up on this tiny lathe!

IMGP9193 by aardvark_akubra, on Flickr


Now I need to know how to carefully bore out the headstock to take bushes of some kind.  I have what I think are 'oilite' bushes, they are bronzy looking and have a distinctly oily look about them.  Any comments on using these bushes anyone?

[dsquire]

John

How did the 'oilite' bushes work for you or did you use something else? 

Cheers 

Don

[John Hill]

Don, bushes for the Adept lathe are still on the 'to do' list, meanwhile my Drummond lathe seems very good at doing the tiny stuff.

[cfellows]

John, where do you find all these little lathes?  Would love to pick up an adept.  They seem like a work of art to me.

Chuck

[John Hill]

Chuck, I found this one on an on-line auction.

They are not all that uncommon.  A work of art they may be but they are not what I would expect to be described as a 'watch makers' lathe but rather a very, very, basic hobbiest machine from a long time ago. Mine has very nice castings but the absolute minimum of machining, not even the base is machined and wobbles when on a flat surface, the hand wheels are as cast with just the minimum lick with a grinder to take off the sharpest edges, the threads are not even in straight.


But it looks OK!

[cfellows]

Yeah, I just thought It would be a nice display piece on the shelf in my study where I keep my engine models.

Chuck

[John Hill]

Chuck, what about making yourself a little display lathe?  I am sure you could produce a nicer finish than on this little Adept lathe.

Odd thing, the people who made this little lathe also made my little shaper which is an absolute gem.  But the little lathe is still nice in its own way.