Maybe it is breaking in, or perhaps I am just getting stronger.
I did squirt some lubricant behind the control knobs, so perhaps that is helping.
Actually, I had some people suggest that I ignore that the manual is saying that I should be able to shift gears at lower speeds, and just do it with the motor off and moving the chuck by hand to get the gears to fall into alignment. That does seem to work better for me. So I just have to adjust my perspective of how to operate the gear controls, I guess.
No joy on the touch-up paint for the flaked off paint on the base. Matt says he just hasn't had any luck with trying to supply that from either the factory or an alternate source, so I'm pretty much on my own about that. He says that perhaps I could find some automotive supplier that would match up the paint for me, but also warned me that this flaking problem will likely show up in other areas. I guess that if it gets bad enough I may eventually try to scrape off what I can of the original paint, and then tape off everything that shouldn't be painted and try repainting everything with POR-15. I think the lathe would look pretty darn sharp in glossy black anyway. And that POR-15 is almost like armor plating.
Perhaps they have your 1340 now, as correspondence has been real slow from them, and I am thinking they may be trying to get backorders out the door. I sure would like to get one of those extendable armed lamps that come with the bigger lathes and put it on my 1228, so I asked Matt about the possibility of buying one from him. Seems he must be busy with something, as I haven't heard back from him.
Anyway, I still haven't cut anything with the lathe. Been mostly just trying to get everything up to snuff, to my liking. I still want to hone out the spindle bore up to the machined areas on the chuck end to try to get rid of the light rust in there. The hones I bought are only 8 inches long, and I need a little bit more reach than that, so I am waiting for a drill extension to get it done. I also found a guy selling steady rest jaws with ball bearing mating surfaces that are a fairly close replacement fit for what came on this lathe. So I bought a set of them and will modify them on my mill to fit. I just never liked the journal bearing surfaces of the steady rest and follow rest.
I never did get the camlocks out of the spindle nose, and sort of lost interest trying as other things caught my attention.
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