New to me: Craftsman 101.27440 lathe.

LoL Robert,

Sounds like something you are dealing with right now ( floating a boat that is)!!! LoL

Anyway, the reason I ask is that I have the lathe just sitting here ever since I bought it. It took a good part of 2 months to get my Atlas horizontal mill rebuilt. And I really don't want to do all that again"if" I don't have to. I've gone over the lathe and it doesn't look like it needs much more than a good cleaning and going through. Like the Atlas horizontal mill, the gears are covered in old grease and saw dust. So obviously all the gears need to be cleaned up and regreased. Then there is the carriage and compound that I need to go through and clean.

So I guess what I am asking is, for those that have been through this process of getting a new (to you) lathe. And it was not quite usable when you got it. What was the first thing you did to get it in working condition? I'm thinking about getting the gears cleaned first, then work on the carriage and compound.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Orangecrush
 
Yep. Or at least for a while, I thought that I might have to! I have never that I can recall encountered rain falling at that rate.

As I've said before, a new paint job certainly looks nice. But doesn't usually make the machine run any better. If you don't want to do a restoration to new right now, I would probably do it in the order Bed & Legs, Headstock, including gears, Tailstock, carriage and lead screw.
 
Hello Robert,

Yeah, you are probably right. Start with the lathe stand and move up from there. But if I start to clean up the lathe stand, that would mean I would have to take the lathe off the stand I'm guessing. And if you look at the pictures I posted in my first post. You can see that the lathe stand is in no way original, it looks more like a bunch of welded pipe with a couple of plywood boards for the top and bottom. Those plywood boards are 3/4" thick and if anything the top one needs to be replaced with something more stout.

I was thinking about replacing the top board with something like a 1,1/2" to 2" butcher block. Unless someone else here knows of a better idea of what to put for the top piece? Or should I just make a new lathe stand? You can't tell from the pictures, but the lathe stand is not very wide, I'd say it's about 16" to 18" wide. And with all the weight of the lathe, I'm afraid that it might fall over?

Last night I started to work on the carriage and compound. I kind of want to take off the carriage and get it cleaned up. Because the all the exposed gears (not the spindle) are covered in oil grease and saw dust. So I can only imagine how much crud is in the carriage assembly. Plus (like the mill) it will give me a better idea of the inside workings in the carriage. Right now I can get the feed to work on the Leadscrew, but for some reason the cross feed will not in gauge? So that is something else I need to figure out?
 
Well, here's a little update on my progress with the Atlas Craftsman Lathe.

I did end up taking off the carriage assembly and gave it a good cleaning. But when I was cleaning the miter gears for the cross slide. I noticed that the one miter gear with the KEY in it was stripped off. So if I want power feed for the cross slide I'll have to buy a new one. But for now I am just going to put it back together until I can find a good miter gear.

Next I took off the QCGB. Man what I mess with all the old grease and saw dust. So I ended up hanging it on my garage door and spraying it with brake cleaner. That kind of worked, but I still need to get into the gears and get them cleaned. There is no way I am going to take it apart with all those gears. But if anyone has been through this process before. Maybe you could chime in and tell me how you cleaned up your QCGB.
 
Mine too, was very dirty AND very loose from lack of lube. Before disassembling mine, I stared into it while fiddling with the gears until I understood how the power flows thru. Then I took several pics as it came apart.
Note that some gears are keyed to the shaft, while others are not.
Note the shims/washers in some places to allow a gear on one shaft to run between gears on another shaft.
The collars and setscrews that locate/ retain shafts and gears have raised burrs on the shafts. Nothing you can do but drive the shafts out, and file the burrs down.
There were ZERO bushings in the housing, shafts running in the cast iron bore. I borrowed a buddie's mill to bore the housing on the output end for oilite bushings. Good thing, too, because the bore was so wallowed out, the gears were meshing WAY OUT on their teeth:eek:
At least they are STEEL gears.:D On assembly, you will stack the gears into the housing, THEN run the shafts thru.
Go for it. It's not too tough, and a picture tells a thousand words. Your lathe will thank you.
 
When I did a SB heavy 10 QCGB , I took pics , wired tied gear stacks together in order, more pics,
cleaned Lubed reassembled,
 
Thank you for the replies guys,

I really don't want to have to take it apart to clean up the QCGB. Mainly because I don't want to mess with the gears. Even though pictures would help me a lot and is a great idea (that is what I did when I rebuilt my Atlas horizontal mill). On my lathe I really just want to get it cleaned up and running again.

So this is what I did last night. I took the QCGB and put it in a plastic container with some mineral spirits. With a brass brush and some picks I was able to get all the gears cleaned up pretty good. Took me about 3 hours to get it clean, but it's done for now. Think all I'm going to do now is paint it and put it aside until I get the rest of the gears cleaned up.

So my next adventure will be to clean up the gears for the forward and reverse tumbler lever. I still need to remove the 9-427 pulley so I can take off the upper and lower gear guard cover. Which is the only way to remove the 9-92A hinge pin.

Any suggestions on the above mentioned would be appreciated.
 
Clausing still sells the miter gear. The new ones are made with leaded steel. As I recall just over $100 dollars.
 
Yeah, I was thinking about calling Clausing and see if they still had any leftovers of the keyed miter gear. There is a couple of them on eBay right now and from the pictures they look pretty good. But again they are asking about the same $$$ as Clausing. But for now I'm just going to put the carriage assembly back together. It's a nice option to have but how often do you use the cross slide feed anyways?

Right now I just want to get the lathe cleaned up. Once I'm done with all the cleaning and getting everything dialed in. I'll go back to the miter gear issue and deal with it. Because who knows what I will find that needs to be replaced!!! LoL
 
If you find yourself doing a lot of facing, you will miss not having the power cross feed. If you do little or none, you won't miss it very often.
 
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