Model making and our machine tools

As promised, here is my 109-20630. These were made between 1940 and 1949 according to one source. They may have been made earlier as Projectnut mentioned. I just don't know.
I broke the 4 jaw down this morning to clean and inspect. It's cast iron. The threads are broken out about half way. It's junk. Dang it.
I have 3 face plates and I really don't want to spend any money on this.
This lathe is a gift from a generous forum member.
I do have a 3 jaw 3" Bison I could mount on one of these face plates. A 4 jaw is a must.
I'll see how the lathe runs before I go through the trouble.
I need to make up a way of mounting the lathe and motor to this bench.
 

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That motor is almost as big as the lathe! Nice looking unit. If everything else runs good, you can probably pickup a new 4 Jaw for a good price.

Seem like, even if you thought about selling the lathe, most people would want the 4 Jaw with it.
 
I had one of those same Craftsman lathes for a little while. Mine did not have a tailstock or a chuck; but, I made an adapter to go from the 1/2"-20 thread to a 3/4-16 to fit my Taig chucks. The adapter would have worked well; but, due to operator error, not the best fit, a little out of round. I made the adapter on the Craftsman lathe including the external thread. The threading was quite tedious due to having to take the threading dial off to get close enough to the spindle.

In any event, the lathe worked okay as long as I didn't push it hard.
 
ShagDog said:
The threading was quite tedious due to having to take the threading dial off to get close enough to the spindle.
Click to expand...
I watched a video this morning that showed this guy threading on one of these. He tapped the apron back to start another cut. No dials to bring the cross slide back to zero. What a PITA
I think turning between centers and holding small parts and the ease of changing out face plates, chucks etc.
Although, changing out a D1-6 is easy but heavy!
 
Way back in the "good ol' days" when I graduated from Pop's electric drill clamped up in a vise to a real lathe, a 4 jaw is what I learned on. And used for quite a while, before encountering a scroll chuck. On the UniMat, of all things. A while back, I had the Craftsman version of your lathe. A good friend wanted it so I let it go. Best I remember, it had a 4 jaw, which I was quite attached to. As well as a 3 jaw scroll chuck. The spindle had a MT-1 taper and was threaded for 1/2-20. The tailstock was MT-0. when I passed it on, I did keep some of the tooling. Which I adapted to the 12" Craftsman, along with the UniMat stuff. I concede that a lot of "adapters" came about from an attempt at cost savings. But many do apply to using a large machine to do small work.

The first ship I was attached to had a rather large lathe. A 16" LeBlond, I think. The guy running it had a number of "specialty" jigs for the stuff he worked on regularly. A goodly portion of these fit into the existing chuck on the lathe. Moving the chuck required quite a bit of rigging and was often done while in dry-dock. Quite literally, the only time the ship wasn't moving around was when she was in dry dock. The ice-breaker hull had a strange shape that caused her to roll when she was tied up to a pier. At sea, 30 degrees was not all that unusual, which was 5 to 6 months at a time. Pitching wasn't that bad, but was there at sea.

The use of small fixtures in that humongous chuck was the norm rather than the exception. I'm sure the chuck took up several inches of longitudinal space. But for small work, the size of the machine permitted such. One occasion had him making a 2 inch "pipe plug" like device with a 3 start buttress thread. Brass, for the main weather deck, let into teak. The plug in the chuck looked like a 1/8 pipe cap in my 12" Atlas. Grossly undersized. The specialty fittings took care of that. The main chuck never moved.

.
 
I bet you have some sea stories to tell Bill.
 
www.hudsontelcom.com

Signal Aspect

Check out http://hudsontelcom.com! Artificer providing novel solutions for electronics, machinery and day to day difficulties with technology. Professional and personal site for an industrial automation specialist turned fiber optic cable splicer. Hobbiest (not to be confused with Hobbit)...
www.hudsontelcom.com www.hudsontelcom.com
See "Stuff worth looking at"

The biggest difference between a "Sea Story" and a "Fairy Tale" is that a fairy tale starts "Once upon a time. . . " and a sea story starts off"And this ain't no s#!t, I was there, I saw it. . . ".

.
 
Last edited:
Bi11Hudson said:
www.hudsontelcom.com

Signal Aspect

Check out http://hudsontelcom.com! Artificer providing novel solutions for electronics, machinery and day to day difficulties with technology. Professional and personal site for an industrial automation specialist turned fiber optic cable splicer. Hobbiest (not to be confused with Hobbit)...
www.hudsontelcom.com www.hudsontelcom.com
See "Stuff worth looking at"

The biggest difference between a "Sea Story" and a "Fairy Tale" is that a fairy tale starts "Once upon a time. . . " and a sea story starts off"And this ain't no s#!t, I was there, I saw it. . . ".

.
Click to expand...
Signal Aspect,
Bill, I spent a little time reading through your contribution to the craft.
You have done a beautiful job of taking a complicated array of subjects and made the content understandable to the commoner.
I look forward to spending more time on the subject.
At one point, you highlighted the difference between your typical electrician.
My son runs crews that install the electricity to commercial buildings. Right now he is at the San Jose airport installing a new hanger for a dot.com business.
When I ask him a question about 110v electric motors, he says, Dad, I don’t know this stuff.
 
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