# 100 year old South Bend 34 Rustoration



## Grendel (Mar 6, 2021)

I recently purchased a no 34 South bend (13x5') here in the UK for just £250, I could see that there was a lot of rust on some of the accessories, but the main works looked to have been protected by oil.
so far I eventually got the apron and carriage off the lathe, the carriage lock was rusted in place and I had to drill out the screws holding the lead screw as the heads had rusted in place - interestingly the screws unthreaded by hand from the castings, so it was the heads of the cap screws (slotted) that had rusted in place, in the week I have had the lathe I have managed to clean up and unfreeze the tailstock, and have managed to get the rusted screws from the steady rest.
As parts are removed they are getting dropped into a bath of evaporust. so far a spare chuck that arrives as a ball of rust has been in a week, and yesterday I finally got it disassembled, 6 slotted cap screws were sacrificed and drilled out to achieve this, the scroll finally coming out by tapping the centre of the chuck until the scroll had moved enough to remove the jaws, one dropped out, but the others required gentle persuasion with a brass drift, as did the scroll via the slots for the jaws.
the bed has some damage, looks like some parts escaped and the inner rear .way has some big chips out of it, fortunately close to the chuck, and the carriage runs on the outer ways.
I will use this thread to document the continued rustoration and get this poor old girl back up and running.


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## martik777 (Mar 6, 2021)

Hard to believe that was made during WWI (1918)
Here's the catalog (13" model 34): http://www.wswells.com/data/catalog/1913_catalog/1913_catalog.pdf


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## Z2V (Mar 6, 2021)

Looks like you have quite a project there. Looking forward to pics of your progress


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## Grendel (Mar 6, 2021)

although the ways look rusty they are responding quite favourably to a quick application of scotchbright, I hardly think I can add any appreciable wear to a 100 year old lathe with scotchbright


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## Grendel (Mar 6, 2021)

so with other tasks scheduled for today, the only work done was more cleaning of the old rust ball chuck, I used a small diamond burr in a dremel to clear the final blockages and rust build ups from all the components, my replacement 1/4 20 unc bolts arrived this morning i had bought 10 each of 1 1/4 and 1 1/2 high tensile bolts, the heads of these were annoyingly slightly bigger than to originals, so the clearance holes were drilled out to 9.5mm, then with a liberal application of bearing grease to lubricate everything the chuck was reassembled, funnily the 1 1/2" bolts which I had thought too long were ideal for the retaining pins for the chuck key gears, the 1 1/4" did the jointing of the two parts, its not pretty, as there is major pitting, but it functions, this is the spare 5" chuck, its a little stiff, but as I dont have a 3/8" key, I am using a spare section of blank tool steel and an adjustable wrench.
During my excavations through the rust i did find a manufacturer for the chuck.
	

		
			
		

		
	










You can see how bad the rust was by the pitting on the body.


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## Grendel (Mar 6, 2021)

once the lathe is up and running I will mount the chuck and give it a clean with some scotchbright, which might make it a little more presentable


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## FOMOGO (Mar 6, 2021)

I think that one may be a bit past scotch bright rescue. Might want to set it aside for use on a welding positioner. Welcome to the site, will look forward to watching it come together. Cheers, Mike


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## dirty tools (Mar 6, 2021)

mine looks the same 
I have a 1916 South Bend 13” X 5’
 I have been trying to find the worm gear, so far no luck
the lathe was used by a electrical shop to rebuild electric motors 
it runs great very accurate and very light ware except the worm gear and some hits on the too post.


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## Grendel (Mar 7, 2021)

a good days work today, started early and it was just a continual round of cleaning and disassembly, today was the turn of the carriage and cross slide parts, as I disassemble parts, they get put into small ziplock bags and labelled, thedy may come back out for derusting and cleaning, but they will be kept together, so the cross slide screw was disassembled, when i got the nut off the end I could see the key pin (dutchman?) was missing and the handle had turned slightly, the topslide was next and this time heat was necessary to get the handle off, then it was to work, scraping and cleaning and finally a quick touch up with scotchbright on all the sliding parts finally i took the good chuck apart, cleaned and greased it and reassembled it, this came apart as it should have with no issues and is once again working well.


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## Grendel (Mar 8, 2021)

well after 24 hours in evaporust the cross slide parts were derusted, a quick wire brushing revealed that there were graduations on one part, I figured I might be able to make them a bit clearer by going over them with a hand graver


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## dirty tools (Mar 8, 2021)

Looks like you are making progress 
doing detail work 

if you need any detail pictures I made be able to take a few


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## Grendel (Mar 10, 2021)

Not a lot done today, but I did get the chuck off the end of the spindle, and the missing back gear lock nut has been recovered from inside the pulley and restored to its correct location.


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## Glenn Brooks (Mar 11, 2021)

If your pocketbook starts to get a bit thin from paying enormous prices for Evaporust, try some white vinegar. Works the same and costs about 5 times less.


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## Grendel (Mar 11, 2021)

so tonight was finishing the engraving on the dial, punching on the numbers (once i had found the small number punches that werent reversed, and then using a paint pen to highlight the lines and numbers


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## Grendel (Mar 11, 2021)

so how much per division I asked myself, 100 divisions on the wheel, and the cross slide measured out at 10TPI, so each division is 1 thou, thetop slide came out at 12 TPI and the lead screw at 8TPI  (notes for my later self)
 1 thou per division is about what I expected, but whether I use these or not, its nice to know and easy to work with (unlike my mill at 0.02mm per division and 80 divisons per turn, with 0.025mm and 36 divisions on the quill)


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## Grendel (Mar 14, 2021)

so yesterday it was tackling the cleanup of the apron, it was carefully disassembled as far as possible (since I could not release most of the clutch gearing as i waited until i had removed everything else and couldnt get a grip on it, anyway parts will be cleaned up and reassembled today
	

		
			
		

		
	









I will insert a note here that to remove one of the gears the oiler tube has to be rotated slightly out of the way




one thing i am finding as i work through this lathe is that just about every oiling hole is bunged full of black paint, however despite this the machine seems to have been kept well oiled for the most part.


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## Grendel (Mar 14, 2021)

today was quite productive, the apron parts were cleaned up and it was reassembled, then it was the turn of the headstock to be cleaned up.
	

		
			
		

		
	



This is the gear that the handwheel drives, it still functions although there is a fair amount of damage to the teeth, to be honest I cant think how that might have happened.
	

		
			
		

		
	




The two half nuts, now I dont know how much engagement there should be , but these look a bit worn  - well I suppose it could have been well used in 100 years.



The rerassembled Apron, nicely cleaned up and greased on reassembly.


the backgear driven gear on the left end of the spindle is not in the best of shape, it does however work smoothly.
	

		
			
		

		
	



the gear on the end of the spindle is worse if that was possible, yet after cleaning the dirt out of the spaces between the teeth, it still meshes and runs smoothly to my amazement.
	

		
			
		

		
	



the reassembled headstock.
	

		
			
		

		
	



I also reassembled the reverse gear, all except the nut, this was the thread that i managed to split in half down the centre, and then flatten out with the copper hammer, this thread will need to be reformed or the part remade.
I do have an option, and that is to repair it the same as the lead screw end thread has been repaired, at some point in its history the threaded section of the lead screw was broken, as someone has drilled in from the end, and tapped the new thread in for a length and pinned it in place, I think this may be a route I may investigate for replacing this thread. either by making a stepped stud with a smaller thread to fit into the part, or possible I may just end up drilling and tapping for a cap screw and washer, i have yet to decide the solution.


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## Grendel (Mar 14, 2021)

Here the previous repair to the lead screw, this has broken into the slot for the key


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## mattthemuppet2 (Mar 14, 2021)

dang, that lathe has had a hard life! Good to see that it's getting some TLC.

The handwheel gear damage is probably from someone trying to shift from powerfeed to halfnut feed or something similar. Check to see that there's a small key between the halfnuts and the feed selector lever - I can't remember where it is exactly but it prevents the halfnuts being closed when powerfeed is selected.

Unfortunately your halfnuts are toast. Check out XRF's thread on bronze filled epoxy and other threads on delrin nuts, you should be able to repair them with a bit of care and ingenuity.


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## Grendel (Mar 15, 2021)

I was afraid that might be the case, however I have formulated a plan, I think I may try to create a 3d model for the half nuts and 3d print a set in ABS, I think part of the problem is the keyway on the lead screw, that must act as a giant single flute tap on the material of the half nut, I might make the drive pin for the half nut out od steel though as that looks to take a fair amount of lateral force, then it will just be a matter of arranging the print layer direction correctly, I have nothing to lose so it must be worth a try.


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## brino (Mar 15, 2021)

Grendel said:


> I think I may try to create a 3d model for the half nuts and 3d print a set in ABS............................. I have nothing to lose so it must be worth a try.



Please let us know how that works out!

-brino


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## Grendel (Mar 15, 2021)

Well a very rough and ready model in fusion 360 (my first real model in that software, I normally use either autocad or microstation full CAD pakages, but they dont have the instant thread making capabilities that fusion 360 does, even then i had to tweak the acme thread specification file to get the 1" 8TPI thread form, so fingers crossed it works.
	

		
			
		

		
	



excuse the holes, i was struggling to get the rib function working as I wanted it to, but all the important parts are there in the corect relation to each other.


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## Grendel (Mar 15, 2021)

not a great start, it took me nearly 4 hours of the printer not behaving to figure out I had worn out the printer nozzle, fortunately I have a nozzle for each type of material, and i rarely use the one i have set aside for PLA, so as my machine has a quick change extruder, I swapped out for the newer pla nozzle and that is now working spectacularly, i have decided to do a test run with a low infill just to see if everything fits on the lathe, if it does then I will print again with a more solid fill.


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## MyLilMule (Mar 15, 2021)

I recently watched a YouTube video of someone repairing a half nut on small lathe. They made an acme nut out of brass that would thread onto the lead screw. And then epoxied it into a set of bored out half nuts. Then cut the brass in half. You may consider that as an option if the 3D printed one does not work out. 

I found it while writing this post:







Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Grendel (Mar 16, 2021)

perhaps not the best of omens ( or maybe its a good omen, who knows) I generally run my 3d printing overnight, and I have just woken to find that one half nut has broken away from the print bed, so I am baby sitting the other, trying to remove the filament that is being deposited in fresh air. I can say though that the thread in the one that broke away is looking promising and i do have 3/4 of the ut that broke away (is 3/4 of a half nut a 3/8 nut?)


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## Grendel (Mar 16, 2021)

after the print ended and while the surviving half nut was cooling on the printer, I took the 3/8 nut down to the workshop (as I made my morning coffee) and did a test fit, after an initial hesitation, that cleared as soon as i did a full turn around the lead screw to clear the plastic junk out of the thread grooves, i am pleased to report the thread fits very well.
if you look carefully you can see the honeycomb structure that gives the parts their strengrh in this incomplete nut, sorry the last picture is so dark, but it is still only 6am here in the UK




I will try and get a better picture with both nuts later, right now its time to stat work ( the good part of lockdown, working from home is you can fit your hours in as you like)


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## Grendel (Mar 16, 2021)

and here is the finished half nut, before the crud was cleaned from the threads, this crud was some of the floating filament from the nut that broke away, it wasnt stuck fast and just running a point along the thread was enough to clean it out.
you can see a slicght crack whee the filament has delaminated, i will brush the outside of the part (not the thread) with acetone which will remelt the abs plastic into the crack, actually this is something i generally do as it fuses the outer layers making it less prone to shear between layers.


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## Grendel (Mar 16, 2021)

so the part fits into the half nut housing quite well, I need to make a 1/2" dowel to push into the back to operate it


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## Grendel (Mar 16, 2021)

meanwhile if anyone wants the fusion 360 file to play with, you may need to PM me your email address as I see that the allowed file types dont include STL, f3d or xml. what you do need to do in fusion 360 is edit a copy of the ACME  thread data file for the acme thread using notepad, below are the parameters that you need to change to get an 8tpi 1" acme thread in fusion 360 basically you set the TPI to 8 then match the Major, Pitch and Minor diameters to the designation for an 8TPI ACME thread (I got the offsets for the diameters from a thread above that was 8TPI, and amended them for the 1" diameter, copy the file, make the changes and save the file as acme thread modified or some other name, (I recall I lso changed the title up at the top of the file.


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## dirty tools (Mar 18, 2021)

A couple weeks ago someone on EBay had a set of half nuts for sale 
I was looking for the worm gear


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## Grendel (Mar 18, 2021)

the nearest ones I see are the correct casting number, but at £180 for the half nuts and another £75 postage and import duties from the USA to the UK, thats £5 more than i paid for the lathe, I am resigned to the fact that getting parts in the UK will be pretty near impossible and shipping costs from outside the UK will be high, for that price I can print out about 50 sets of ABS half nuts, so if they last a few months per set....


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## martik777 (Mar 19, 2021)

Is the apron driven by the 1/2nuts or a keyway in the leadscrew? If the keyway those 3D nuts should last awhile.


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## Grendel (Mar 19, 2021)

its driven by a keyway driving a worm on the leadscrew, the half nuts are only for threading, and as i dont have a threading indicator will be engaged, then left engaged while I thread, reversing the lead screw back to the start of the thread


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## Grendel (Mar 19, 2021)

well today I had a chance to machine the half nut dowels out of some 14mm steel bar, centre drilled, faced off and turned down to 12.6mm on my unimat with live centre support, 0.1mm cut hand fed, produced some lovely chips, the half nuts move as they should, and open and close, they also seem to grip the lead screw well, whether they work under power will be the test once I have the lathe rebuilt.


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## dirty tools (Mar 20, 2021)

The half nuts look great
could you make me a set? Mine could be replaced same year and model
and year as years but not used that hard. The original owner rebuilt electrical motor. The half nuts and worm gear hav seen better days


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## Grendel (Mar 21, 2021)

today was spent doing some tidying, cleaning the name plate and threading index on the legs, and starting to make space for the lathe by stripping 3 printers down to the useful gears and components


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## Grendel (Apr 4, 2021)

well its been a while, but other things got in the way, and some tidying needed doing to be able to progress to the next stage, anyway, this morning the tidying was completed and I had a space for the legs, after wrestling the bed next to the legs it was then a case of wrangling an engine hoist through the house and setting it up in a space no bigger than the spread of its legs, after this it was a matter of minutes to lift the bed onto the legs, aligning the bolt holes was fun, but eventually it was all completed, the headstock and tailstock were lifted up and placed on the bed, 
	

		
			
		

		
	





after this it was time to look at the bed and do some clean up work, there was a spot on the carriage ways where there was a section a foot long that was badly pitted with rist, I have worked this with a smooth file to break through the rust, then gradually finer stones have been used to smooth out the surface, the pits wont overly affect the carriage movement, but it needs to be smooth, I will work on this until I am happy with the carriage movement.
	

		
			
		

		
	






this last picture shows the state it was in before, this is right at the end of the ways, past the tailstock, so is not as crucial, but it will still be cleaned and smoothed.
next will be the headstock and tailstock ways, these have some bad damage near the chuck, but this area isnt needed as much, as neither the headstock or tailstock run in this area, it might be an issue for the steady rest though.


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## Grendel (Apr 7, 2021)

so the machine is back together and it was time to deal with the broken thread on the reverse shaft, this was mashed when i hit it with a copper hammer and both split n half and mushroomed, yes I could have brazed it and retapped it, but I went a different route, i milled the thread off of the end of the shaft, chucked it up in my unimat to get a centre point on it, then drilled it out with a 8mm drill (should have been a 7.9mm, but that was the closest I had and i was tapping a deep hole) after that I tapped it out to 3/8" Whitworth (3/8 16tpi) to a depth of 30mm to take a handy socket head screw i had, this with a washer will retain the gear on the end of the reversing shaft, enabling gears to be changed out, at a later date this can be replaced with a custom stud with the correct thread on the end to take the old nut, if I want to bring it back to original, meanwhile the socket cap screw does the job


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## Janderso (Apr 7, 2021)

Looks a bit cluttered in there.
Nice looking half nuts!!  Great job.


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## Grendel (Apr 7, 2021)

Janderso said:


> Looks a bit cluttered in there.


well trying to fit a 5 foot south bend into a workshop no bigger than 8 ft x 12 ft and thats no surprise, theres another lathe and a mill in there too (Unimat lathe and seig mill). Once is up and running I will clear more space around it.


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## Janderso (Apr 7, 2021)

Grendel said:


> well trying to fit a 5 foot south bend into a workshop no bigger than 8 ft x 12 ft and thats no surprise, theres another lathe and a mill in there too (Unimat lathe and seig mill). Once is up and running I will clear more space around it.


Please don't take offense, we all do the best we can with what we have.
There is a Youtube guy, Dudley Toolwright, he is very talented, his shop is so crowded you have to wonder how he does it.
He has to open his garage door to move machinery out of the way to use others.


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## martik777 (Apr 7, 2021)

I think clickspring (youtube channel name) has one of the smallest shops I've seen at 5.5 x 12.3 ft:








						From little things...*
					

My shop is definitely what you would call 'compact'. At 1.7m x 3.8m, its not much more than a walk in wardrobe! I would say it is best described as like a galley kitchen... without any food.  I walk...



					www.clickspringprojects.com
				




He does amazing home machinist work


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## dirty tools (Apr 12, 2021)

You have a little bit less than mine
i have a 10’ X 20’
southbend 13x5 lathe 
enco 9X54 mill
15 gallon air compressor (vertical) with secondary 30 gallon tank
drill press 2, (1) post mounted (1) bench 
2 grinders
1 knife sharpner
6’ long tool box with top boxes
2 stand up lockers (tool storage)
work bench 24” wide X 10’ long
and a standby generator that I have to move out before I can work


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## Grendel (Apr 12, 2021)

well if I extend into the second half (woodworking) of the workshop, there I have an L shaped workbench, a table saw, a bandsaw, a pillar drill, a bench drill, a planer thicknesser, 4 bench grinders (stored under the bench, one has a water wheel, one a sanding belt and 2 standard, one rigged out for polishing, add to that a 12" bench mounted 3 in 1 brake roll and shear, plus a small 1/2 ton fly press, everything in the wood shed is on wheels and gets rolled out to the middle for use (except the band saw and pillar drill, space is definately a premium, so i will have to find a new home for all the stuff boxed up behind the lathe.
thats all in a 24 foot x 8 ft space (including the metal workshop area, so 2 12x8 foot rooms, fortunately I only need to fit me in there with the tools.

today I was trying to get the counter shaft up and running, this will be difficult as it has a slightly bent shaft from removal, none the less, a third small lathe has been sat on a board on the south bend to try and true this up, the shaft ids too long to turn, as I cant fit the tailstock on the end of the bed to support it, so I dialled in the shaft and spun it up and am using  a small hand grinder to gradually true up the end of the shaft as that had also been mushroomed, once i am happy I can get a bearing over the end I may be able to use a bearing block to support the tail end.needs must at the moment until I have the big lathe running its the best option i have. once the big lathe is up and running I can turn a new shaft for the counter shaft., sort of fix A to get B running to replace A


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## dirty tools (Apr 12, 2021)

You have done a lot of work on the old girl 
it looks great 
I just got my worm gear back from welding 
next is to reground (clean up the welds) it
if I can figure out how to take pictures I will post them


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## dirty tools (Apr 12, 2021)

Welded worm gear
for 1913 South Bend 13” X 5’ lathe


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## Grendel (Apr 13, 2021)

well last night I saw a post on the south bend lathe facebook group, which was the mount for the gear cover, I have a gear cover, but dont think I have the mount for it ( actually I may have but not recognise it, but as soon a s i spotted it mounted using the spare V way at the headstock end of the lathe it got me thinking. I have been trying to think how to mount the counter shaft and motor, and was thinking I would need to drill into the bed or legs to achieve this, but the picture i saw showed me another way, by making a bracket that mounts to that spare V way, so out with fusion 360 and a few measurements taken off the lathe and I have designed a mount that will fix to that v way, the prototype is currently 3d printing in ABS, and I have made allowance for an 8mm thread in the bottom to tighten the prototype to the lathe bed, a pair of these will provide the necessary pivot point to support the countershaft and motor assembly (pics later when its finished printing.


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## Grendel (Apr 13, 2021)

heres the view of the STL file


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## Grendel (Apr 13, 2021)

well I went out for a walk, and by the time i arrived home the part had printed, I did need to run an M8 tap through to clean up the printed thread (not unusual) but when I tried it on the lathe it was a perfect fit, the 1/2" hole through will form the pivot point for the countershaft and motor unit, now to print a second, ideally i would have rounded over all the outer edges, but this was just the prototype to see if it fitted the ways, which it does perfectly.


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## Grendel (Apr 13, 2021)

okay more pictures, the arrangement I am using to true up the end of the shaft, not really a problem as the bearing rides n the inner end of the shaft where its not bent, next the motor support mounted on the lathe, such a good fit, , then finally i realised what this part was, it is of course the mount for the cover, that also bolts to the lathe way down that end


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## Grendel (Apr 22, 2021)

still working on getting the countershaft straight, I had an idea, I cant use the nice new 3/4 hp motor i have sitting waiting for a pulley, but i have an old 1/4 hp motor, so a quick drive option added, the 1/4 hp motor doesnt like driving this big beastie, in fact it quickly got quite hot, but i managed to get some chis and straighten up one end of the shaft, if the worst comes to the worst, i can turn it by hand and it will make chips this was good enough for a start though, it runs smooth and quiet, but 1/4 hp is way not enough. this drive just tensions on the weight of the motor.


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## Grendel (May 23, 2021)

Grendel said:


> well I went out for a walk, and by the time i arrived home the part had printed, I did need to run an M8 tap through to clean up the printed thread (not unusual) but when I tried it on the lathe it was a perfect fit, the 1/2" hole through will form the pivot point for the countershaft and motor unit, now to print a second, ideally i would have rounded over all the outer edges, but this was just the prototype to see if it fitted the ways, which it does perfectly.


well I have got to the point of hanging the motor and countershaft, I had not realised how much space these would need, and once i had shifted the lathe far enough to get the assembly mounted, it soon became obvious that this part was going to need to be a lot stronger, wood or even steel as the 3d part slowly delaminated and bent out of shape, still the 3d printed parts can be used as stops or indicator mounts., so now to work out another way to make these hinge points.


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## Grendel (May 27, 2021)

shifting the lathe around to try various motor mount options was proving difficult, short of having an engine hoist permanently in place, so a set of 4 500Kg rated wheels was obtained and fitted, this raises the lathe by about 4", but as I am 6 foot 4" this brings the bed up to a workable standing height


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## Grendel (May 27, 2021)

these are quite handy because the levelling part retracts into the body to allow the wheels to roll, so once you are in position you can re-level the bed


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## Grendel (Jul 12, 2021)

well finally i have constructed a motor and countershaft mount and have the lathe powered up, I have steel on order to replace the countershaft as that is struggling to run true so its replacement will be the first big job on the lathe, it takes a nice cut under power, though I did trip the 5A fuse I was running on startup once the main drive shaft and chuck were connected, that 3/4hp motor draws 3.5A running so startup may well have exceeded the 5A limit, 13A now installed and not had a problem since. I did have to beef up my motor mount as the original 1" x 1/8" bar was too flexible, its now been replaced with 3/8" thick and is a lot sturdier. but its once again making chips, next job is to tune it all in


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## Grendel (Jul 12, 2021)

upand running at last


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## Grendel (Jul 17, 2021)

making the new countershaft using the old countershaft for now


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## martik777 (Jul 18, 2021)

Please make a guard for the exposed gears on the gear train


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## Grendel (Jul 19, 2021)

I have the guard and the bracket, just havent had a chance to fit it yet


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## martik777 (Jul 19, 2021)

Good, hope you do it soon. It is so easy to get caught in open gears.


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