1942 SB Heavy 10: What Kind of Cabinet Is This?

gunsmither said:
I spoke to a guy at South Bend about 30 years ago when ordering a synthetic drive belt. So I asked him about the date of my machine. He looked
it up, and told me it was made in 1964! Needless to say he agreed that couldn't be right, but according to him, that's what their records showed for the serial number. I bought a new set of reversing gears a few years after that, and was told it was made sometime in the 60's by another guy
in the parts dept., per the serial number. This fellow said that they had a fire at sometime, and all their records got ruined. Who knows?
Click to expand...

He could have been confused, because SB changed their serializing method in the late 1940's and started over with the numbers. There is a 6741 serial number in the "old" method and a 6741 plus some letters in the "new" method. Sometimes companies will stamp their own letters after the SB serial number, confusing things even more. The military would often stamp extra stuff after the SB serial number.
 
Appreciate the info regards serial numbers, dates of manufacture. My machine has the un-Flame Hardened Bed. Not sure when they started to
flame them, or if they ever did them all after a certain date? When I bought this in 1976, the frosting on the V ways was "as new". Now after 45
years of my use, the ways show some wear, but the machine is still quite accurate. I use it for production runs of of 50-100 pcs. fairly regularly, with the 6 station turret I added about 30 years ago. I even had my Unimat set up as a drill press to drill side holes in a piece I used to manufacture before I went to a CNC set up. With position stops, it worked great. It's one of my "old friends"!
 
What kind of base is it? Awesome is what kind of base it is! Awesome and rare evidently. Nice score!
 
Flame hardened beds first made their appearance around 1956-57 (experimental, I guess). Later, still in the fifties, it became an option for all lathes except the 9". Around 1967, flame hardening became standard for the 10" and above. These dates are approximate, but fairly close.
 
I would imagine that the "flame hardening" wouldn't make a whole lot of difference to a small time gunsmithing operation like myself, or schools and hobby machinists, but for toolroom and true production machines, it would prove important. South Bend really never changed their basic design much over many years, living on their reputation. The Taiwan and Chi Com machines really killed them. When I was a young man looking for a lathe, there were no import machine tools, only used domestics, of which South Bend seemed to be the Cat's Meow, to me anyhow, at least in the area I resided at the time in the early 70's near Chi Town.
 
In case anyone is interested, I found a photo of another South Bend maple cabinet in Google images. I forget what site it's from, but the photo's watermark says "govdeals.com"; a government surplus auction house. Dig that crazy paint scheme.

Original Paint Maybe.jpg
 
interesting. the crazy paint was most likely made for organizing draws. different colors for different purpose TYPE storage.
the machine is an UGLY color... the cabinet not SO bad.
 
That is an awesome machine! You're all set with the taper attachment too. I'm digging the cabinet, been thinking of building some drawer setup under my chip tray.
 
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