2016 POTD Thread Archive

Moved my rear axle from my '56 Chebbie 3/4 pick-m-up from the 30° gay-raj upto the gar-age and, my ultimate wish, into the cellar. The cold in my gay-raj laughs at the feeble attempts of my little woodstove to let me be able to work in something less than a parka. No matter how warm air in there gets my tools are still bone chilling cold. I hate having cold hands. It's mid 50's here and in the 3 hours of having all the windows and a door open, it finally got to 40.

I'm heading out to the packy to pick up some IPA's to contemplate how to get it in the cellar. Anybody wanna stop over for a beer or 3?
 
Here's the view, outta the gay-raj (freestanding building) into the gar-raj ( under the house) using my John Deere compact tractor. Brought engine hoist up small incline ( pant pant) and monkeyed it around the gay-raj with it and Jack stands and muscled it all into the cellar where I am now sweating and on my third IPA:p . All that is left is move into my work area1455916624205-1053775460.jpg
 
Hi, my name is James, I just joined this forum this week.

I cleaned up my lathe today in anticipation of getting back into hobby machining. It was badly rusted and I had to wire brush it back into shape. But it's all set to go now. Except I forgot to do the mill spindle. I was totally focused on the lathe today. I'll have to clean the mill spindle up tomorrow.

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James, welcome to the forum! I'm gonna call bad move using a wire brush on your machines exposed ways to clean rust, well what kind of wire brush? I personally would try a much more gentle approach that won't scratch, never never use power tools to do that job on finished surfaces. Not implying you did but throwing that out there. Some gray scotch Brite on a flat block is would be my roughest approach to cleaning finished surfaces like way slides. But the best best best abrasive would be some triple or quad zero steel wool, it won't damage the metal, or put unintended holes anywhere. The scotchbrite would be if the surface is super rusty, this is just my own personal opinion but when you use even the gray stuff you can cause changes in the geometry of the machine if you scrub too much in one spot, maybe just a thou or some tenths but accumulative it could cause taper in the part or convexity on faces of parts, these may be extreme but possible.
 
Hi James, that's an interesting looking machine. I thought I was looking at one of those picture-in-picture things for a minute there until I got the perspective figured out! Looking forward to seeing it work, and the cleanup looks good too.

-frank
 
@chevydyl,

Thanks for the heads up. I didn't think I about damaging the lathe. I actually used a really coarse wire brush on the end of a powerful grinder. :grin:

I didn't do the ways though. They weren't rusty. They were covered in oil. I did do the chuck and the table top of center carriage. The only part I did that might have been a bit critical was the tail stock spindle, or whatever it's called. But the wire brush didn't seem to put any scratches in it. It must be pretty hard stuff.

In any case, as pretty as this lathe is it far from being a precise instrument. You'd be lucky to hold anything to a mere 0.001" repeatably. It's basically a piece of junk in terms of any decent lathe. But it'll do for hobby work. I used to have better lathes in the past, but unfortunately I sold them and I've been kicking myself ever since. This lathe will do what I need though.

But yeah, I didn't really think about the wire brush damaging the ways. Actually the ways on this lathe are pretty bad (even though it's still almost like new and hardly ever used). They never were good from day one. You can feel the things getting tight and then loose again as you crank the table back and forth. No amount of adjustments can cure it. They ways themselves just aren't all that true. Same thing is true for the cross slide. I doubt that wire brushing this thing would hurt it much since it's already off by more than a wire brush could do.

But you're right. Not a good idea to do this on an expensive precision machine.
 
francist said:
Hi James, that's an interesting looking machine. I thought I was looking at one of those picture-in-picture things for a minute there until I got the perspective figured out! Looking forward to seeing it work, and the cleanup looks good too.

-frank
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The head of the mill is tilted at a 45 degree angle, back from the center of the bed. The funny thing is that when I cleaned this lathe and took the pictures the mill part of it was totally out of my mind. I was so totally focused on the lathe I wasn't paying attention to the mill head at all. This is because I have a project coming up that I want to use the lathe for and I just don't need the mill head right now. But I'll be cleaning that up next.
 
I didn't wanna trash talk about your machine as you did, but I was thinking those same things lol. However my post was also intended for other readers, cleaning rust from tooling or machines is a common task, I've cleaned my fair share of good deals lol, I got about 8-10k dollars in tooling for 500 bucks, his shop burnt down and the water rusted everything, but I have cleaned some stuff, major rust gets an acid soak or naval jelly.
I will point out that the tool rest is an important surface, mine wasn't flat and when I'd tighten my tool post it'd often turn, specially annoying when setting up a thread gage, now that it's scraped flat, it doesn't turn even with heavy torque while tightening. A power wire brush would definitely revert back to the original condition. Although my unflat condition was from the po wrecking the chuck into the compound.
 
@Steve, thanks. I found the manual for mine. I see the chuck does come off via three screws behind the chuck. That's nice to know, I might want to make up a 4-jaw chuck for this someday.

That Northern Tool lathe looks pretty good for $1199. If I recall correctly I paid more like $1800 for this one. In fact, I'm sure I did because I remember the order was over $2000 with a few accessories I bought with it. The lathe alone might have even been $1900. So that $1199 is looking pretty good. And I bought mine over 10 years ago! That's amazing that you can buy a lathe like that today for only $1199.

Although I just watched the video on that page. I think that Northern Tool lathe is quite a bit smaller than mine. It also doesn't have a power-driven lead screw for cutting threads. Mine can cut threads, but I have a whole box of gears that you have to go through to figure out what threads you want to cut. It's doesn't have a quick-change gearbox. But it does have a power-driven lead screw and a box of gears. So if I ever need to cut a thread I'm set to go. :encourage:
 
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