While waiting for the various parts to show up, I started cleaning and stripping the headstock end of the lathe. 

After lots of scrubbing & Citristrip and WD-40, there seems to be a lathe in there somewhere. 





I removed the cover from the feed/power shaft shifting assembly and found a substantial nest of ancient chips and sludge.  Ugh.  On the other hand, no broken gear teeth.  :)





And later, after a little cleaning & painting;






The black color is the remainder of whatever filler coat ATW used to build up a paintable surface over the ground castings.  Citristrip softens it enough to scrape away, but enough remains to give a patina and to mitigate some of the rough surface.  Thankfully, it hardens right back up once the Citristrip evaporates and will still serve its purpose under the new paint.  My old South Bend had a similar undercoat and it worked just fine in the same circumstances.





Now that everything is off the lathe, the basement is starting to get a little crowded.




Tonight's puzzle is to find a place to stash the carriage sufficiently out of the way so I can get the crane back onto the bed.  At that point I'll remove and clean out that catchbasin under the headstock end.  I'll strip the bed in sections, putting the basin under each.


;;; eof