- Joined
- Dec 7, 2015
- Messages
- 519
A month ago I brought home my first lathe- a 1941 South Bend 9a. I didn't really intend to do a full restoration on it right away since I'm itching to start turning, but one thing lead to another and here I am. I thought you guys might enjoy the process.
Starting out with a nice lathe, but some factory worker (I assume) slathered this thing in paint. This blue crinkle paint is everywhere. The paint is in good shape in some places, and terrible shape in others. This is the starting point:
I bought some late model leveling feet and in the effort to mount them, I found so much filth. Lots of used motor oil. Decades upon decades of grease & grim. I only intended to take it apart in order to mount the feet, but I just couldn't put it back together so filthy in good conscious. In order to mount the feet, I had to drill new mounting holes in the bed. That process already has a thread on here.
In the process of getting the feet mounted, I used Zep Purple industrial degreaser to clean and strip the lathe bed. I was happy and surprised to find a nice South Bend name plate under all that paint! I used an 8" diameter cardboard concrete form to soak the bed. Most of the degreaser ran out over night, but it worked well enough. I really wanted PVC, but that diameter was just too expensive.
You can see though that the degreaser worked exceptionally well to strip the paint:
Now the bed and feet were painted. I'm using Ben Moore DTM Alkyd Low Luster paint sprayed through a HVLP gun. This is my first time using a HVLP gun and all I can say is that I'm not sure why I waited so long!
Now, to jump back in time for a moment- when I was talking to the previous owner, I was told that the lathe was a 36" model. Therefore I went out and bought a 36" chip pan. Well it turns out that the lathe is actually a 42" model which is great! However, the chip pan would not fit under both feet at the same time. My solution was to simply offset it like this:
...And that seemed to work ok with the original lathe feet. However, the new later-model feet are much bigger and that REALLY pushed the chip pan further to the right. I ended up having something like 8" of chip pan extending passed the end of the lathe bed. The more I looked at it, the more it bothered me. So in a moment of what I assumed to be poor judgement, I decided to do something about it.
First the old holes in the pan were filled and ground smooth:
Then I sectioned out a 6.5" section of the pan:
I welded it back together and then used fiberglass bondo to blend the seam. I didn't take a picture of the bondo sanded down:
Finally I could paint the pan. I did spray a layer of black first, and then covered it with the machine grey color I'm using. What I thought would be cool is to put some sticky letters down on the bed before spraying it grey. Then I could peel the stickers up and be left with black lettering. In the end, the grey paint over the sticky letters left a VERY cool "embossed" look which I'm leaving for now. If the sticky letters start peeling up, then no big deal; I'll peel them all up and have the black letters I originally intended:
Overall I'm MUCH happier with the length of the chip pan, and the weld seam is completely invisible. I'm really proud of how this one turned out!
Next up was the filthy headstock. Now, when I went to purchase the lathe, I saw it in operation. It sounded nice and quiet, smooth, and in really good shape. I'm so saddened to see that there is some gulling on the spindle and cast bearings. One "band" is pretty bad, though the areas around that band seem to be nice and smooth. I really have no idea what to do about this. I've heard that people will stone the high spots, and just move on. Outside of replacing the head and spindle, I don't think anything can be done. This lathe will be used for hobbyist type work from here on out, so I guess it is what it is...
The head and drive train were degreased and stripped. I found that the head casting had some kind of rough spots, so I went ahead and smoothed it out with bondo. Not to mention that it had quite a few holes in it that someone drilled. I wanted all those extra holes gone!
Finally, the head was painted and is looking NICE!
I painted the non-machined area on the back gear and also did a cleanup on the back gear itself:
And some other parts with paint:
That's where I'm at right now... LOTS more work to do, but it's coming along!
Starting out with a nice lathe, but some factory worker (I assume) slathered this thing in paint. This blue crinkle paint is everywhere. The paint is in good shape in some places, and terrible shape in others. This is the starting point:
I bought some late model leveling feet and in the effort to mount them, I found so much filth. Lots of used motor oil. Decades upon decades of grease & grim. I only intended to take it apart in order to mount the feet, but I just couldn't put it back together so filthy in good conscious. In order to mount the feet, I had to drill new mounting holes in the bed. That process already has a thread on here.
In the process of getting the feet mounted, I used Zep Purple industrial degreaser to clean and strip the lathe bed. I was happy and surprised to find a nice South Bend name plate under all that paint! I used an 8" diameter cardboard concrete form to soak the bed. Most of the degreaser ran out over night, but it worked well enough. I really wanted PVC, but that diameter was just too expensive.
You can see though that the degreaser worked exceptionally well to strip the paint:
Now the bed and feet were painted. I'm using Ben Moore DTM Alkyd Low Luster paint sprayed through a HVLP gun. This is my first time using a HVLP gun and all I can say is that I'm not sure why I waited so long!
Now, to jump back in time for a moment- when I was talking to the previous owner, I was told that the lathe was a 36" model. Therefore I went out and bought a 36" chip pan. Well it turns out that the lathe is actually a 42" model which is great! However, the chip pan would not fit under both feet at the same time. My solution was to simply offset it like this:
...And that seemed to work ok with the original lathe feet. However, the new later-model feet are much bigger and that REALLY pushed the chip pan further to the right. I ended up having something like 8" of chip pan extending passed the end of the lathe bed. The more I looked at it, the more it bothered me. So in a moment of what I assumed to be poor judgement, I decided to do something about it.
First the old holes in the pan were filled and ground smooth:
Then I sectioned out a 6.5" section of the pan:
I welded it back together and then used fiberglass bondo to blend the seam. I didn't take a picture of the bondo sanded down:
Finally I could paint the pan. I did spray a layer of black first, and then covered it with the machine grey color I'm using. What I thought would be cool is to put some sticky letters down on the bed before spraying it grey. Then I could peel the stickers up and be left with black lettering. In the end, the grey paint over the sticky letters left a VERY cool "embossed" look which I'm leaving for now. If the sticky letters start peeling up, then no big deal; I'll peel them all up and have the black letters I originally intended:
Overall I'm MUCH happier with the length of the chip pan, and the weld seam is completely invisible. I'm really proud of how this one turned out!
Next up was the filthy headstock. Now, when I went to purchase the lathe, I saw it in operation. It sounded nice and quiet, smooth, and in really good shape. I'm so saddened to see that there is some gulling on the spindle and cast bearings. One "band" is pretty bad, though the areas around that band seem to be nice and smooth. I really have no idea what to do about this. I've heard that people will stone the high spots, and just move on. Outside of replacing the head and spindle, I don't think anything can be done. This lathe will be used for hobbyist type work from here on out, so I guess it is what it is...
The head and drive train were degreased and stripped. I found that the head casting had some kind of rough spots, so I went ahead and smoothed it out with bondo. Not to mention that it had quite a few holes in it that someone drilled. I wanted all those extra holes gone!
Finally, the head was painted and is looking NICE!
I painted the non-machined area on the back gear and also did a cleanup on the back gear itself:
And some other parts with paint:
That's where I'm at right now... LOTS more work to do, but it's coming along!