- Joined
- May 3, 2015
- Messages
- 26
So after finally getting my Early Craftsman 101 up and running in a more than marginally passable manner, getting the various electrical bugaboos worked out (both in the drum switch I picked up and in the 70 year old wiring in my garage) I'm finally able to run to old girl for more than a few minutes at a time. Just long enough to discover that apparently I'm a bunch taller at 6'1" than the Lilliputian they designed the legs for... though I've never been one for back problems, but standing hunched over that 33 1/3 bathroom vanity cabinet height top just wasn't working. So enter ePay.
First came the pair of 1934-36 D-series 9" lathe feet. The top of them looked pretty narrow, so I took the chance. As it turns out, they are about 1/2" taller and 1/2" wider (at the top) than the original feet:
I'm not going to go out on a limb and say the bigger footprint and heavier mass will add to the performance at all, but I do like that there are bolts on all three sides of each end of the lathe now instead of just two at the HS and one at the TS.
The bolt pattern is a little different, so I did have to drill two new holes in each, but whatever, they were cheap and cast iron is soft:
But 1/2" really wasn't going to do all that much for me, and poking around the net I stumbled across folks who were running their 10" and 12" lathes without the wood plank and bolting the feet directly to the cast legs- thus the bolt pattern must be the same. So enter a pair of second series feet, and presto-chango, another 3 3/4" or so-
Obviously still have to paint legs and the new bits, and now that I have my final measurements I can finally cut the chunk of reclaimed bowling alley my uncle gave to use for the top and the shelf, and with the 1/2" Delrin pads that will go under it my final height of the lays will come in at a nice comfortable 42". Which just happens to be bar height, so as far as I'm concerned, it's Miller Time.
First came the pair of 1934-36 D-series 9" lathe feet. The top of them looked pretty narrow, so I took the chance. As it turns out, they are about 1/2" taller and 1/2" wider (at the top) than the original feet:
I'm not going to go out on a limb and say the bigger footprint and heavier mass will add to the performance at all, but I do like that there are bolts on all three sides of each end of the lathe now instead of just two at the HS and one at the TS.
The bolt pattern is a little different, so I did have to drill two new holes in each, but whatever, they were cheap and cast iron is soft:
But 1/2" really wasn't going to do all that much for me, and poking around the net I stumbled across folks who were running their 10" and 12" lathes without the wood plank and bolting the feet directly to the cast legs- thus the bolt pattern must be the same. So enter a pair of second series feet, and presto-chango, another 3 3/4" or so-
Obviously still have to paint legs and the new bits, and now that I have my final measurements I can finally cut the chunk of reclaimed bowling alley my uncle gave to use for the top and the shelf, and with the 1/2" Delrin pads that will go under it my final height of the lays will come in at a nice comfortable 42". Which just happens to be bar height, so as far as I'm concerned, it's Miller Time.
