Clausing 5428 rebuild

[rwm]

It's very impressive (read dangerous) when I use Coleman fuel to start a bonfire. I keep a safe distance from the fireball and mushroom cloud. I would not want to use that for parts washing fluid routinely.
Robert

 

[AndySomogyi]

Gee Andy so many photos. I will link your project on my Facebook page if it's OK with you? You should have told me as I helped start this HM forum. I now contribute here too and have my own page here at the top of forums. You could send the bed to Steve Watkins in Navasota Texas and he could plane the bed and all you would need to do would be to scrape some new oil pockets in it and put some Rulon 142 om the saddle to bromhit back to the original centerline.

Thanks Richard, sure by all means link to it. Hopefully someone finds this info here useful.

I’ll give Steve a call, but TX is quite a far drive from Indiana. I spoke with Franjo an Milwaukee Machine Tool, got a price that not completely unreasonable from him, and Milwaukee isn’t that bad a drive.

I’ll find out more next few days when I get the spindle back together and can get a true runout measurement of it, and a true bed measure once I level it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[AndySomogyi]

Temporary Back Gear Fix

Me back gear bushings are destroyed, most likely because one of the bushings was pushed in all the way blocking the oil hole. So this bearing was running dry for who knows how long.

I need to reassemble the lathe so that I can make new bushings for it (don’t have another lathe nor do I currently have access to one).

So as temporary fix, I drilled out the bushing so at least oil will get to it. It’s not a big deal because I don’t plan on using back gear to turn a 2 inch bushing, I mostly just don’t want this to bind up.

 

[AndySomogyi]

Took the underdrive assembly partially apart, mostly just to pull the cross shaft to make inserting the spindle easier. And of course, what do I find, more idiotic damage.

One of the belt tension adjustment screws was cross threaded the entire way. I mean, how does one manage to cross thread a bolt like this???

So I had to completely pull this assembly to fix the cross threaded bolt. Gave the entire assembly a good cleaning in my total ghetto parts cleaner. It’s just a nasty job working on greasy grimy parts so I had to clean them. They were all caked with this nasty sticky goo that just would not come off, I think it was probably motorcycle chain lube.

 

[Dhal22]

Great thread here. Enjoying following the progress.

 

[AndySomogyi]

The inside of the underdrive cabinet was an unholy mess, there was literally 1/4” of caked on black grime. I’m not ready to do a full rebuild on this lathe yet, just want to get it to where it’s usable. But I can’t work with that kind of mess, you can’t see anything, the grime gets everywhere. So I decided to clean it out as well as I could.

what worked OK was spraying it down with engine degreaser, this loosens it up very nicely. Then I made a solution of hot water and degreaser and kept washing it down an wringing out the greesy rag in the bucket. Finally got it to this point where at least you can work around it. Yeah, the bucket had some nasty crap in it, was thick with this goo.

 

[BGHansen]

You are doing an excellent job on the restoration. True case of "if you do it right the first time, you won't have to do it again".

Bruce

 

[AndySomogyi]

Wow, just wow.

This lathe was originally wired such that all of the current went though that little red normally closed microswitch. ALL the current!

No wonder the contacts on it are fried.

I’m not an electrician, and I’ve never seen one of these magnetic relays before, but all it took was a few minutes looking at how this *can* be wired to realize the purpose of the red switch is simply to interrupt power from the relay coil, it’s not intended as a main switching switch.

As it was wired, the relay did precisely nothing!!!

 

[middle.road]

<...............> I’m not ready to do a full rebuild on this lathe yet, just want to get it to where it’s usable. But I can’t work with that kind of mess, you can’t see anything, the grime gets everywhere. So I decided to clean it out as well as I could.

However, you are giving it one heck of a 're-conditioning'. Nice effort & work.
I thought that my 1440 out of a maintenance shop was a bit beat, that poor Clausing was just plain abused.

 

[Tim9]

I looked at the first picture of your bed and yeah... it’s rough. But don’t get discouraged. My first semi-real lathe was a 90 y/o SB model C with a bed twice as bad as the way your bed looks. Th apron crank was trashed. Anyway after tweeking and replacing the apron with an EBay apron....that little 9” SB is a surprisingly good lathe. It’s not perfect, but can make very nice parts.
Your Clausing will be much more ridgid than a South Bend 9”
I’d Concentrate on the cross-slide and compound. Make sure the lathe is leveled. Ignore the cosmetics of the bed for now. Unless of course you’re building stuff for NASA.
PS.... I’d use mineral spirits or diesel fuel. In my opinion...Coleman fuel is too volatile....too dangerous to use around a shop. I had a friend who used gasoline to clean a wood floor in his utility room. Long story short is that the water heater ignited everything and he was burned and scarred from head to toe. Stuff happens. No need to tempt fate.