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Gingery Lathe and Accessories

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dsquire:
VT

Im sitting here trying to be patient watching this thread unfold. I know it's going to be a good one if what you are showing so far is any indication.

Cheers  :beer:

Don

black85vette:
Awesome to see the lathe and the patterns.   Impressive bit of work.   Cool to see how to get started with a furnace.

vtsteam:
Here is an early casting of a "spray" of parts. I got impatient with making one small part at a time, so started to cast several at one go.

This phot illustrates some of the interesting methods Dave Gingery came up with. The blackened steel rods in the picture are actually cores. They have been covered with soot from a candle so they won't stick to the aluminum. On the right are 4 bearing halves for making two sets of split bearings. These will support the lead screw. The steel rod core forms a perfect bore that does not require finishing on these bearings.

In the upper left is  the leadscrew ball handle. The steel core will be knocked out of that one and a set screw will be installed to lock it to the lead screw.

In the lower right is the half nut locking lever, also cast on a steel core.

If these parts had simply had sand cores or no cores they would have had to be drilled and bored by the builder,which would have been tricky without a lathe to start with. Gingery assumes you have only a hand drill as a mechanical aid. I happened to have a small drill press which made things a little easier. The attention to the needs of a poorly equipped shop is one of the most admirable aspects of these books. You can indeed build a machine shop from nothing, because it does build itself.

Sometimes you make something for a Gingery machine, that you will re-make later, better, or more accurately, when your lathe is more operational. You redo some things that enabled you to get to a better equipped stage. Recursive construction.

black85vette:
"recursive construction"   I can appreciate that approach.

It does seem to be an affliction that once you get a basic shop together you start using the shop to make more stuff for the shop.  Sometimes the shop becomes the project and you don't make anything else.

vtsteam:
I quickly seized on the power that I had been given to make what I needed instead of buying it. Cost was very important, because I was trying to save enough money to buy a piece of land to build a house on. All of th aluminum I used came from a $10 purchase of over 100 lbs of pistons at a marine engine rebuild shop. They had a barrel full of them, and when I told them I was building a lathe, the machinist there smiled and took me to the barrel and asked if I could use that. I said sure. He said take it. I gave the guys there the $10 for doughnuts, so it wasn't exactly a purchase, more a mutual donation.

Back to the power of what I now realized: so when the Gingery book called for a couple of purchased pillow blocks to do a temporary boring setup for the headstock, instead of buying pillow blocks, I decided to make some. Why not?

So I carved out a pattern, and then taking a cue from the steel cores, I decided to cast in a bearing -- but permanently. So I took a hardware store Oilite (sintered) type plain bearing, and soaked it overnight in some lacquer thinner to remove the oil impregnation. Then I taped up its ends and made it a sliding fit in a wooden pillow block pattern. Then I rammed that up in the sand like this:

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