first post - intro and Monarch Model A

Hi all -- this is my first post. I have been lurking on and off for a long time. In my last job I had free access to a shop that had a Nardini 14x40 lathe and a Microcut mill. Both were from the late 1980's and were nearly unused when I started working with them in 2001. After leaving that job in May 2013 I was latheless except for a cheap wood lathe in my home shop.

Last weekend I picked up a Monarch Model A from a CL ad. It is Lot 144, No. 120. The legs were missing, so I am building a stand for it. It came bolted onto oak table that was heavy duty for household furniture, but a mite wobbly with a lathe on it.

I also picked up two chucks, two or three faceplates, and a mess of change gears. It was running with a 1HP motor and the feeds worked, but the motor might be underpowered. It is hooked up through an overhead jackshaft that has a wooden step pulley to drive a flat belt. I could only find one gear tooth that was chipped and the bearings seemed fairly tight. I couldn't detect any slop when I grabbed the chuck and shook it.

Getting it out of my pickup with a 1 ton engine hoist was a trick. I ended up taking off the headstock, motor, jackshaft, and tailstock. There were some shims under the front edge of the headstock, so I have been reading various posts on how to do a headstock alignment. I think that Rollie's Dad's Method makes sense as a way to get it set up without having a whole lot of precision tools available. The folks at my old job would probably loan out the precision level, DTI, and micrometer if I asked them.

Any advise? BTW - I think this thing was made about 1915-1920.

Welcome to forum. Thanks to John Legge for scanning and Greg Menke for hosting:

http://pounceatron.dreamhosters.com/docs/monarch/monarch-lathe-brochure.pdf

A model A is a pretty large lathe to bolt to a bench - does it have a quick change gear box? This option become very popular after it was introduced in 1912 and more so during WWI 1914-1918. The peak production of Model A was in 1917-1918 were Monarch made about 3,000 each of these years. So the odds are good that yours comes from that time frame.

Please post pictures when you can.

John

I saw that lathe on CL and debated it, but those missing legs really turned me off. If you need a hand setting up, send me a PM.

allan

The guy who listed it also had the legs. He just got them in a separate lot at the auction. He might have sold them, but it would have more than doubled the cost.
I'm building the bench with a narrow top and A-shaped legs so that it is stable like a sawhorse. The legs will be stiffened up with plywood and there is a hollow shelf that holds 240 lbs of ballast.

The lathe is set up in its new home now and passed the smoke test last night. The 1hp motor is pretty wimpy, but it does work.

Is the tailstock taper likely to be a Morse type? I need to find a dead center for it.

The rocker from the toolpost is also missing so I will have to make one of those. I might do it the old-school way and forge it. Maybe I can forge a tool holder, too.

the t/stock on my monarch A has a morse 3 taper , the headstock taper is a jarno12,,,,.IIRC shortened
best iwshes
doc

Thanks, Doc. I measured the taper at 0.60" per foot and figured that meant that it was a Jarno. Now that I look at the chart it says that Morse #3 is 0.6024" per foot.

Concerning Jarno tapers think eighths and tenths. If Morse #3 opening of tailstock bore should be about .938, if Jarno *8 it will be close to 1" , .8 at the small end and 4" long. Maybe this would help:

Morse Taper Shanks

Jarno Tapers

I wish all tapers were as easy as Jarno.

Sounds like the first lathe that I ever bought in 1955, for $150. Pretty sure that one was 144-120. If so, Monarch said that it was a 1915.
When I bought it it had a crap lash up that only gave two speeds- direct, and back gear. I put a model A Ford car transmission on it and ran it that way for quite a while, but finally got tired of listening to the gear howl, so made the wood cone pulley. We ended giving it to a Millwright in Southern VA, Ben Hassett, when we were running out of floor space. Does the compound look too large for the machine? Don't know what it is off of, previous owner had adapted it to the machine. Second lathe was another 14" Monarch, but geared head and quick change--otherwise, same carriage and tailstock--that's how I figured that the compound on the cone drive one wasn't Monarch. Can you post a pix?

Funny story associated with the old girl. In the late 50's I was working for Frank Piasecki, after he left what is now Boeing-Vertol. We were building a flying abortion that he called the "Flying Jeep"--that is until whoever owned the Jeep name at the time threatened to sue, then it became the "Flying Geep" This thing started out with two 6 cyl Franklins, which just weren't enough power. I was heavy into hot rods at the time. Some engineer got the idea to put superchargers on the engines, (a story in itself) and I was making drive pulleys one night (second shift) when the foreman of the final assembly came up and started to chat. I asked them if he could get richer main jets for the carbs, and he gave a strange look and asked why they would want to do that, Tried to explain why but got a raft of "I've been doing this for years" Final result was that they were burning half the exhaust valves every test. Ultimately they gave up on the piston engines and decided that they would replace the both with one French Artouse (sp?) turbine. In the process of making the change over they had to hook up the lube oil tank to the engine--which had metric fittings. No problem--we can make them. Five engine lathes, but non would cut metric threads. I had collected a set of gears that would cut metric on the old lathe, and I came in that afternoon, and everybody from foreman of the machine shop on down were scratching their heads. Frank was always in a hurry, and wasn't about to wait to get something that the shop could make (he thought). The shop foreman, Henry, mentioned the problem to me, and I told him that I could cut the threads at home, so he said go home and do it. I did, and brought the pieces back and left them on his desk later that night. Next afternoon we were sharing a cup of coffee before the start of the shift and when no one was nearby to hear him, he told me that Frank just couldn't see how some 19 year old could make something in his basement the the PIASECKI MACHINE SHOP couldn't with all their "resources".

Herb Kephart

Thanks for posting that story. It does sound like I have your old lathe. It is stamped 1915 near the serial number and the compound does look like a retrofit job. In fact, I was working on the compound this morning. It was binding at the ends of its travel and sloppy loose in the middle. After taking it apart it looks like the gibs were way too loose and the screw was binding due to misalignment.

Your wooden cone pulley is still working just fine and all the change gears are still in good shape.

I will post some pictures when I can.

That lathe is 99 years old now and when you knew her she was just 40. It's going to be quite a reunion.

Before the Monarch was sold, it spent a few years on loan in a late friend of the family's basement. Here it is circa 2004, being retrieved and just before it was sent south to Virgina. The last picture in the bed of the truck is included because it shows the homemade drive with the wood cone pulley. This should provide a positive identification. Pity that the old girl has lost her legs; as you can see they were shapely things...








Somewhere I have a picture of it fully setup in our shop, but that was back in the film days.

Doug Kephart (son of Herb)

That is definitely the same lathe. I'm going to post some pictures ASAP. The legs do look much better than the bench she is on now. I'll bet the auctioneer suggested removing them to be sold as a separate lot.

First a overall view and a shot of the serial number stamp from the tail end of the bed.



I also included a shot of an interesting repair on the boss that locks the gear rack in place. It looks like the boss was part of the bed casting but it broke out, leaving a large hole. Someone repaired it by turning a new steel boss that was a loose fit in the ragged hole in the casting, then filled the gap with molten lead. When I took the gears off the lead had worked loose, but it was obvious that someone had fixed that problem in the past by just packing the lead back into the hole with a punch. I followed suit and it only took a few light taps to pooch out the lead enough to hold everything tight together. It is a clever way to fix the problem that I would not have thought of myself.

A shot showing the headstock. I love the sight-glass oilers.

The power feed shaft is driven off of the lead screw. You can see the gearing at the bottom of the image. The power feed can also be driven off of another little shaft that under the power feed shaft, but I don't know why you would want to do that. Can someone explain it to me?

Why would you power the feed off the belts?
To save the wear and tear on the end gearing.

A shot of the carriage and the too-big compound. The cross feed dial is also oversize -- it was neatly brazed in place at some point and works fine. There also appears to be a repair on the cross-slide gibs. The gib on the right is brazed in place and another one was fitted on the left. It looks like the overall height of the dovetail was machined down too far to allow the original gib to work so they just put in another one on the left.

The control linkage was all out of whack, which made it hard to figure out how everything works. I had to spend an afternoon looking up behind the apron with a mirror to figure it all out. This lathe is different than the others I have used in that it has two separate controls to engage the lateral and longitudinal feeds. I hope there is something that prevents you from engaging them at the same time. It seems like that would make everything lock up. Or maybe it would let you cut a taper - now I'm not sure if that is a bad thing.

Last picture. This one is the wooden step cone. The motor is only able to get all the gears turning at the lowest speeds. I probably need to get the main bearings cleaned out and adjusted, but they spin without binding. I'm thinking a capacitor start, capacitor run motor might be a better choice and less likely to get bogged down. I'm going to make some chips first, but eventually I would like to put a 2 hp motor on.

I wrote this all out, then it disappeared--and in spite of it frequently flashing a box saying "auto saved", couldn't retrieve it. Gotta love these d**n 'puters.
I had a 1 1/2HP motor on the lathe, it was able to slip the belt on occasions. Backing off on the belt tension when parting sometimes saves the tool when you have a "snag'' I wasn't aware of the repair that you mentioned--must have been done prior to my ownership. The crossfeed dial, was my modification, original was a small thing, like the compound has. Big dial came from a junked Brown and Sharpe horizontal mill. Did you notice the strange graduations on the carriage hand wheel? No idea what that was from. The small 10 tooth pinion that drives the change gear stack is another mod. that I did, to cut the metric threads, I think. Makes the thread chart on the headstock wrong, because as I recall it called for a 20 or 40 tooth gear on the "stud" so any thread on the chart will be 2X or 4X what is listed. The bare shaft on the feed originally had a small 3 step cone--like the one still on the spindle but the slowest feed it would give was, as I recall, .018". Fast feeds were common in the era that the lathe was made, because all tooling was carbon steel, and the accepted way to finish was with a tool with a broad nose, slow spindle speed and quick feed to get across the piece before tool wear affected the size. High speed steel was a development out of the need to produce thousands of steel projectiles--called at the time "shells'' during WW1. I had a small variable speed drive hooked to that shaft with a belt, but took it off to use for another application when the machine left.

The ways had considerable wear when the machine left us, hence the shims under the headstock. In spite of all the mods, and wear, I made a lot of money with the machine--primarily making parts for textile machines.

Where abouts in VA are you? I have a very good friend in Warrenton--has a International truck agency. He has one of our lathes that was replaced with something newer--an '07 Lodge and Shipley 24" X 72"

Herb

Thanks, Herb. I need to print out all this stuff and take it out to the shop to keep as a reference.

I live about half way between Lynchburg and Richmond. Its a long way from Warrenton, but I drive through there a few times a year on the way to my in-laws house near Leesburg. I picked up the lathe in Lynchburg from a guy who got it at an auction.

I grew up in North Wales, PA. If you are in Delaware County, that's pretty close to you.