My South Bend 10L aka "Gizmo"

(home)



contact: gmlathe@comcast.net

(all photos)


*** 2/5/2005, Gizmo has moved on.  I happened into the right place at the right time and got a good deal on a potentially magnificent lathe.  So, Gizmo has a new home and I know he'll do well there.  I'll create pages for the new lathe, linked via (home) above.   Thanks for looking. ***

Last Picture- all spiffed up and ready to go.









I've been looking for an upgrade to my 6" Atlas for some time, and found a great fixer-upper on ebay.  It seems to be cobbled together from a bunch of different SB lathes, all with different oddball paintjobs; pretty grungy, but mechanically its in good condition.  I got it home, and my wife immediately named it Gizmo, and informed me it is a He.  Its apparently not possible for a lathe to be a She.

Feb 23, 2004 - Before



Actually, Gizmo was fairly painful to look at.  So once I got it together and fooled with it a little, I decided to renovate.  Theres a lot of material on the internet, I came across electroysis rather quickly and since I have a high current DC supply handy, I figured it was a good fit for my small space, plus I was curious.




April 12, 2004 - After



The toolpost is one of the cheapo Aloris clones.  If I really like it, then maybe I'll go for the real thing.  Last Christmas, Santa got my father a KRF Omnipost which is what I'd get otherwise.


June 10, 2004, debugged & working!



Stripping

Painting

Tooling

Bed & Tailstock Wear



Lessons learned;

1.  Paint strippers can work well (I tried Citristrip spray which really suprised me with how well it worked).  The problem is it leaves a horrible mess that gets into every last nook and cranny.  Next time I'd use citristrip to loosen the paint, then use electrolysis for a few hours to clean off the mess - that short time won't hurt bearings.

2.  TSP works well for the paint and oil- but it wears out, so be prepared to make several batches.

3.  Spend the time to thoroughly mask.  I forgot to mask the oilers as I primed... no big deal, just more to clean up.

4.  Definitely go to the trouble of setting up a spray booth.  The Benjamin Moore paint I used does hide the brush strokes fairly well, but it can't do wonders.  However, the machine looks so much better now I'm not complaining.

5.  I chose "Grey Shower" as the paint color- its a bit light, and the high gloss isn't quite right.  Though perhaps the gloss will help the paint resist oil.  I'm happy with the paint on balance though, but the test is how well it wears.  So far its doing really well- after 4 months or so of on & off use, there are no apparent scratches in the paint- even on top of the saddle where chips collect & are brushed off.



;;; eof