After discussing my belt problems with John and Stew last weekend whilst visiting Johns place, it became clear that something was very wrong with my S&B lathe.
When doing anything a little tough, like cutting a 10mm thread with a die, my lathe belt would slip making the job impossible to do. John previously indicated that my lathe should manage a 10mm thread with ease. But it couldn't.
The situation was such that I would tighten the belt to such a point that it would destroy itself. If I didn't it just wouldn't grip. I have tried 3 belts now. One leather, one nylon backed leather and one synthetic type called Belta.
This is the Belta, as you can see it's tearing apart and it's not been on very long.
So I decided to try a car "Serpentine" belt. The reasoning was that such a belt on a car had a far harder life than my lathe would ever subject it to. The other bonus is that it would not need jointing.
So, now having purchased a suitable belt from Unipart I set to stripping the headstock in order to fit it. Worth noting is that Unipart can select a suitable belt by the length you specify in mm. This makes life far easier than trying to find which car you need a belt from, such as in Halfords. The belt cost £12 which is a bargain.
Here I have started to strip the headstock, look at the diameter of that front bearing, 4 inches
It became clear that the spindle had to come out the front, so off comes this lot.
Now out comes the front bearing, turns out to be a double race.
Spindle out, look at the size of it for such a small lathe....
The rear bearing
Alas, it now became apparent that a continuous belt could not be fitted to this lathe. Here is why.
The headstock
Well, a jointed belt it has to be then. The headstock parts were cleaned, re-lubed and put back together. Thankfully everything was in excellent contdition with no signs of any detectable wear to be found.
One bonus, I found a spindle lock. Long overdue/missed and will come in real handy when removing the chuck....
