Putnam sliding gap bed lathe

[DiscoDan]

Some of you may recall that I'm a volunteer at the Tuckahoe Steam & Gas Association machine shop museum in Easton Maryland. I was in the shop today working on the restoration of a 1890s Putnam sliding gap bed lathe. Today's job was removing the feed rod on the front and the lead screw on the back. Thank God for having an impact driver on hand. Some of those large screws were in there pretty good but I prevailed. This will mostly be a cosmetic restoration but we will be evaluating each component as we clean it and restore it. Our shop is a mix of line shaft machines and line shaft machines converted to electric motor drive, which the Putman was. We will probably keep the red color but go darker since many of the machines in the shop are either black or gray. I may even add some pinstriping.