Upgrading My PM 1236-T Lathe

I guess it has been a minute since I've posted. This week I focused mostly on the back splash and the chip pan. I went with a silver/aluminum color for the back splash, and I'm not really 100% sold on it. On top of that, there is never enough natural light in the garage to really gauge it. For the chip pan, I found a brown that feels a bit middle of the road between the aluminum color and a bronze color. I quite like it. I'm not sure if I'll repaint the backsplash in this color or not. I might just rock the tri-tone! haha.

The chip pan got some basic surgery, but man was that difficult! I don't have a mig or tig welder, so I had my buzz box turned all the way down to the lowest amperage. It was still blowing through the thin steel on the pan. I managed to get just enough buggers on there to hold it in place, ground down the crappy welds (I'm actually a pretty good welder, but clearly not on this thin sheet metal!) and filled the remaining holes with JB Weld. I ground down the JB Weld and then smoothed the area with Bondo. In the end you'd have to look pretty close to see the modification, and even then the bed of the lathe is going to be covering this area. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I also added some custom poor man's embossing. You're welcome, PM. ha!

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I'm in the home stretch now. There's still a few small components to paint, and then it's on to machining all of the aluminum pieces for mounting the accessories.
 
Great job. I wasn't at all successful plugging the hole in the supplied chip pan and had a new one fabricated. Your welding technique is far better than mine. It's all looking terrific. I only question if PM deserves the special call-out with the raised lettering - the conditions of the spindle bearings might tell that story. Keep posting - this is fun.
 
davidpbest said:
I only question if PM deserves the special call-out with the raised lettering - the conditions of the spindle bearings might tell that story. Keep posting - this is fun.
Click to expand...

Thanks! It's slow going, but I'm working on it as I have time. Plus... it's my time, so I guess I can take as long as I feel like! haha! But I'm happy with the progress. I feel like doing a proper paint job on a machine tool (as opposed to slathering a bunch of paint on an assembled tool) is a daunting amount of work, and somehow here I am approaching the finish line. That's an accomplishment for sure!

I have a Starrett 670B hole attachment arriving on Tuesday and will be able to use my new (to me) Federal indicator to measure spindle runout.
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Looking very nice!

Knowing that the bed and head is 330 lbs is very helpful, thank you for sharing this.
 
Thanks to some quick help from a few of you on my tailstock thread, I was able to press on tonight and get the tailstock stripped, those weird plugs ground down, bondo’ed & smoothed, and in primer.


I would note to anyone taking apart their tailstock to be mindful of the detent ball #24. Since it just applies some drag to the dial, I didn’t even consider that there would be a ball under there. That thing shot to the other side of the garage somewhere and is lost to the ether. I doubt it will be all too difficult to find a chrome bearing ball to replace it with.

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You can see the weird plugs that we have decided were either core supports for the casting, or fixturing features. Either way, they looked like crap and stuck up quite a bit. I ground them flat, then applied bondo to smooth it all.

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The back side was also smoothed, although it was quite challenging to get the inside “pocket” corners really well. In the end, it’s far from perfect, but it’s miles better than from the factory.

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Looking good Willy. Are you seeing any similarity between this Bondo work and cake icing yet? LOL.
 
Will how did you do the "poor man's embossing"? It looks great
Also like that Krylon color, gotta get some
Mark
 
markba633csi said:
Will how did you do the "poor man's embossing"? It looks great
Also like that Krylon color, gotta get some
Mark
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I wondered if anyone would ask. I used sticky back letters. That doesn't SEEM like it would work very well, but I also did this for my SB lathe when I restored it nearly 3 years ago. They lettering has lasted this long without peeling off. I think the real key is to make sure that you get a thick layer (or two, or three) of paint on there so that there are no pin holes for oil to seep under the sticky letters and cause them to peel.

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Aha! Very resourceful, sure fooled me- I would never have guessed
 
I want to take another look at Krylon, I used to use it a lot in the before-time, then somehow got coaxed over to the Rustoleum side.
Some of those new colors and textures look interesting
 
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