Now that the lathe is nominally working, I can use it to make parts for itself.  Here are two new compound clamp bolts.  The old ones are in the background- as usual some heavy-handed brute tightened them until the heads started bending & literally beginning to tear the head from the shank.  So I turned the new ones out of some 1" square 12L14.  The lathe really cuts too.  12L is pretty easy to turn, so I chose to rough the shanks in one pass, 3/8 HSS w/ .240 DOC and heavy feed, yielding a continuous fat, hot chip. The lathe just ate it up, only deepening the easy growl of the headstock gears. I took the last .010 as a finish pass to leave a 1/2" shank for the threads (1/2 - 13).  The new clamps lock the compound much better & the threads are better too.





Project #2 is to make a new cross-feed nut.  This is the remains of the original.  When the lathe had its crash, I guess the iron nut broke in half & they adapted the biggest remaining part.  I think the large threaded hole held a plug which itself had an off-center hole threaded for the stud which protrudes thru the cross-slide.  That allowed the nut to be adjusted from side to side, aligning it to the axis of the cross-freed screw.  So I'll make a new nut w/ adjustable backlash, and replace the cross-feed screw while I'm at it.





Another ham-fisted brute somehow managed to bend the teeth on the apron handwheel feed pinion gear in both directions- what a mess.  That led to the carriage jamming in a traumatic fashion when under threading feed.  As a temporary measure I bent the teeth a bit straighter with a drift.  The carriage feeds OK now, but there are tight spots on the rack where it also has damaged teeth.

These are 14 1/2 degree PA, 12 DP gears.  I'm going to give a try at cutting a new pinion on a blank, then turning off the old pinion's teeth, then shrinking on the blank.  I'll replace the rack too.











October 2005 - much backing and filling ensues while I try to get the spacers and arbor on the horizontal mill straightened out.  Meanwhile, theres other jobs;



Since I have the vfd driving the lathe, theres no need for the spindle brake- which didn't work very nicely anyhow.  So I pulled off the linkage and made a little collar to retain the shaft.  Still some paint touchup to do...





This is of greater use.  Some ancient repair included discarding the original ATW carriage lock assembly, replacing it with a plain steel bar which serves to help hold down the apron end of the carriage, but no longer supplies a lock.  So I cut away 1/8" from the back of the bar and fit a spine.  Then I cut the chunk out of the middle of the bar where the carriage lock bolt goes, then pinned & soldered two .050 thick pieces of steel to make up for the cut away material.  After trimming to fit, the middle section is free to clamp the bed & is restrained from side to side movement by the two adjacent parts of the bar.





;;; eof