Companion Lathe Original Color ?

Aaron

It is a long time since I bought any spray paint of any color. In the 30's and 40's before Rustoleum started making the lighter variant, I'm pretty certain that the darker variant was just called Machinery Gray. What do they call the two shades today? Does anyone know for certain?
 
Here are two versions of rustoleum gray. The Atlas lathe headstock here is painted Rustoleum Charcoal Gray, while the carriage stop is an OEM color of unknown age.
 

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wa5cab said:
Aaron

It is a long time since I bought any spray paint of any color. In the 30's and 40's before Rustoleum started making the lighter variant, I'm pretty certain that the darker variant was just called Machinery Gray. What do they call the two shades today? Does anyone know for certain?
Click to expand...

They have a lot of grays, but the most common you can find in stores as brush on enamel or spray paint is Smoke Grey (lighter) and Charcoal Gray (darker).

They also offer Machine Tool Gray and Machinery Gray in their Commercial and Industrial series of paints, and Light and Dark Machine Gray in their High Performance series but I don't see these in many stores, and assume that is more of a dedicated paint store item.

I used Smoke Gray brush on enamel to touch up my (guessing) early 70s Craftsman 6x18" 101.21400. Not a perfect match but it was close.
 
Can anyone tell me what thread size the chuck would be ? I would like to find a three jaw one but am having trouble figuring out what the size is . Using my thread gauge it looks like a 24 thd. , the O.D. of the thread is .484 , I.D. of the chuck is .454 . What am I missing here ?
Thanks
 
I don't know off-hand. I suggest that you find an early 1930's Sears catalog that lists the machine. You can try our Downloads first but I don't recall which years I uploaded. And if you do find one, you will have to become a donor at the $10.00 per year level in order for you to download it.

From the dimensions the you quoted, I would guess that it might have been a nominal 1/2" originally but that means that it is pretty well worn.
 
Not sure if this is your lathe or not, the head is wrong, but perhaps yours is earlier or a mix of the Companion wood lathe and metal lathe? In any case if it is a Companion, the spindle is listed as 1/2"-24.

Here is the page from a 1939 Sears catalog.

1939 Companion lathe.jpg
 
Which of the two lathes do you have?
 
The base and pulley set-up of the top wood lathe is like mine , but it has the cross feed set-up , and four jaw chuck of the metal lathe , & I don't have a tail stock .
 
One more comment ... saying or writing C craftsman / Companion or Craftsman / Dunlap would be incorrect. The three names were dreamed up in the 1
the 1920's and 1930's by the Sears advertising department and used like a company name for things sold by Sears.
There is some reason for thinking that Craftsman meant more expensive or better than the other two at least initially.
 
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