I've had a hard time obtaining the UNF Allen key capped machine screws so I didn't want to waste any by making them wrong for I only had four screws off eBay .
As a result I made a little jig yesterday to help me quickly and accurately get all the replacement gib screws the same length and with the same spigot size on the end .
To get the jig accurate I put a brand new half thickness nut on the new Allen screw and wound it in the threaded gib screw hole till it stopped then recorded the remaining distance showing between the nut outer face and the thread side of the lip of the cap . Unsurprisingly all were exactly the same to within 3 thou .
I then turned the jig over length and counter sunk the end to take the securing nut using a twist drill a little bigger than the diagonals of the nut in the lathe tailstock chuck
On putting it together I then calculated how much I'd need to turn off the jig to allow me to re put the screws in and turn of the unwanted material but to leave 1 & 1/2 threads of unused thread once the gibs were reset . The MK 1 eyeball came into play I couldn't be bothered to try and work out what the 1.5 threads clearance would be as I couldn't find my feeler gauges
Anyway it worked well, once all the gibs were reset I was puzzled because the compound would only traverse so far back & forth .
It took a few minutes and a mug of coffee to realise that the new half thickness nuts I'd also used were 1.2 mm more across the flats than the ones that came off with the old well wrecked gib screws .
A quick session of waste bin diving saw me rescue the original nuts and put them on the new Allen screws , once I cleaned up the slip burrs on the old nuts . This all happened because I'd had a lunch break between taking of the old gib screws out , making & fitting the new ones I'd failed to measure the new nuts and I didn't realize that iI had to use a different spanner to tighten them up.
All's well that ends well it's all back together now and it's as sweet as a nut .
The securing nut was drawn into the aluminium to hold it & the screw secure whilst I turned the screw to end shape & total length.
Set up
Various stage for the gib screws .. forefront screw is correct and properly tensioned .
Note how much the new nut on the left & right is so much bigger that it will foul the base of the compound slide once it hits the anti rotation locking screw part of the casting .
I must remember to check to see if that during the 70 or so years since the lathe was made that any other nuts & bolt head dimensions have changed . Fortunately the nuts thicknesses were identical so it didn't matter when I put the original nuts back on.