War Time South Bend Lathe

Hi Mike,

Thanks... that lines up with my thoughts about the U.S. anchor. I'll have to see if I can find out more about it.

Brian
 
i don't have a lot of info as far as the symbols embossed in the SB's, but the anchor on your lathe is definitely a US Navy mark
 
" Great buy you did good.Good luck with it."

Well, time will tell if it was a good buy or not. I paid $600.00 for it, and while we were talking, we got on the subject of vehicle repairs... he's a mechanic and works on old souped up cars.... and I mentioned that I was going to replace my rear discs/drum combo on an F150. While I was busy strapping the lathe down, I see him put two brand new discs, brake shoes for the emergency brake and a spring kit in the back of my truck. What a good guy.... he said that he bought them for his F150 but now he drives a Chev and would never use them. He wouldn't take a dime for them, so, I really only paid about $400.00 ,or less, for the lathe.

Brian
 
Brain Coral said:
" Great buy you did good.Good luck with it."

Well, time will tell if it was a good buy or not. I paid $600.00 for it, and while we were talking, we got on the subject of vehicle repairs... he's a mechanic and works on old souped up cars.... and I mentioned that I was going to replace my rear discs/drum combo on an F150. While I was busy strapping the lathe down, I see him put two brand new discs, brake shoes for the emergency brake and a spring kit in the back of my truck. What a good guy.... he said that he bought them for his F150 but now he drives a Chev and would never use them. He wouldn't take a dime for them, so, I really only paid about $400.00 ,or less, for the lathe.

Brian
Click to expand...
Sounds like karma.
 
Looks like a 14.5.

Should have a 2 hp 3 phase motor.

Get a vfd such as an Allen bradley 1300 series and you can have plenty of torque at low speed and plenty of higher speed with seldom changing belt position.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337Z using Tapatalk
 
A Navy South Bend, now that's cool. I have a WW pattern Derbyshire cross slide for a watchmakers lathe, also from the Navy. Most of its plating was corroded away, so I wonder if it was in service on a ship for instrument repairs?

I wonder if you could find extra info on it from the Navy?

You might me missing the double nuts on the back of your cross slide leadscrew, make sure you have them :)
 
Yesterday afternoon, I took a little bit of time to look things over in the shop. If you look closely at the compound in picture #6 and #8 from the beginning of the thread, you'll notice that it looks odd and very flat topped. It is a cobbled up home made job that I knew about when I looked at the lathe. There was a spare compound that came with the lathe that appeared to be the right fit. Not so....

The home made compound appears to have the base of a South Bend compound, maybe from a larger machine, and was flame cut to fit. The circular dovetail is a beautiful fit and the bottom has scraping marks.

Here's some pics of both compounds...

IMG_0285%20600x800_zpsqtendrpl.jpg

IMG_0287%20600x800_zpsixk6lquh.jpg

IMG_0288%20600x800_zpsvgttndm3.jpg

So that's a bummer.... if I had known more about how a South Bend compound looked like underneath, I would have been able to tell at a glance that I really didn't have a South Bend compound. The home made adaptation is rather well done and functions, albeit, with a little excessive backlash, but I wanted to really clean this old girl up. It would be a black eye with that compound. The chances of finding a replacement for this size of lathe will be very low, indeed, for this particular size of lathe.

It turns out that this lathe is known as a 14 1/2" x 36" model.

Brian

It just occurred to me that I should see if the top slide of the spare compound fits the dovetail of the base plate. If so, I could clean up the cut on the base and at least have something that looks better.
 
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