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Rambold Turret Lathe Restoration

Reid Zeigler

Aluminum
Joined
Nov 5, 2005
Location
Pennsylvania
After lusting after Frank Ford's neat little Rambold turret lathe for many years, I finally found one myself - with only one catch, it was a rusty mess after being stored outside for a long time. It was very inexpensive, and I'm now retired with lots of available free labor, so I decided to bring it back to its former glory. I'll post some before and after photos as I go along. My strategy is to get rid of the rust first, so everything is currently apart and de-rusted and I'm sending the base out for powder coating. The lathe will be painted separately and I'm still deciding about paint. I'll keep you posted with progress photos.

Reid
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Please do, should be cute as a button when its done, ...............and assuming you're going the whole hog and filling and sanding the lathe castings, .........oh what joys await you. :D
 
"Whole hog" looks like it will include some scraping and realignment of the turret and spindle. That thing has some rust on it, definitely.

Next you will be wanting a lever crosslide for cutoff and grooving....... Definitely a project to keep a fella busy for a while.
 
After I get the cosmetic work done I'll check the bed flatness and alignment. The ways look surprisingly good with the rust off, with a few dings that I can stone down. I have a lever cross slide from a 10mm Levin instrument lathe that I might be able to adapt. It has one tall toolpost that was always too big for the Levin, so it will be interesting to see if it will work. All of the paint has been wire-brushed off and the stand is going out to be powder coated. The lathe casting is typically rough and had about 2mm-3mm of paint but I'll probably use spot filler to get the casting and grinding marks filled, then heavy solids filler to make it perfect before painting. Any suggestions for type of paint? I've used brush-on enamel and rattle-can enamel in the past. Leaning toward Sherwin Williams Alkyd enamel for this one.

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This looks like an awesome project, and I've been inspired by Frank's lathe in the past, the videos helped light the fire to look into turrets. I do have a bed turret for a South Bend 9, it works pretty well, but could use more power. I have another for a South Bend 10L which awaits the project for that lathe.

The only downside to the Rambold is the spindle bore, as I recall it's pretty small. Possibly 9/32", I can't remember exactly. Maybe you know.

They are very nice lathes, from what I've seen in Frank's videos, never been to his shop, just watched a bunch of his videos and machining page...I remember a video with the Rambold of him making some Banjo screws that are some odd size...

What size tooling does the Rambold use? I use mostly 5/8" shaft. Rambold must be 5/8" as that's the smallest common size.

EDIT: I found one of Frank's videos on YouTube using the Rambold. I realize you have probably seen this, but I'll post it in case others are interested. He doesn't have too much on youtube, but has a couple videos of his Rambold. What separates Frank from other people for me is his ingenuity. In this video, you see a tool that acts like a Box Tool and takes the diameter down on a brass rod that he will use the die head on. If I'm not mistaken he made that tool from a socket, and ground/milled it out to turn it into a box tool as such.

Frank is full is these types of ideas and his machining and luthier pages are chocked full of them... :cheers:

 
Here's the other of Frank's videos on the Rambold.

Gotta love the kazoo music! :cheers:

EDIT: Hah! this one has a real box tool! Still, that socket is one clever idea...pick your socket per your screw size... ;)

 
In this video, you see a tool that acts like a Box Tool and takes the diameter down on a brass rod that he will use the die head on. If I'm not mistaken he made that tool from a socket, and ground/milled it out to turn it into a box tool as such.

-I'm pretty sure he turned that from scratch, out of something like O1 bar stock. I can't find the article, but he's got a write-up, and as I recall, it was something like simply drill in to the desired body OD, then drill the smaller diameter you're turning to, then drill in from the opposite end for whatever relief OD is necessary.

Then mill a quarter of the cutting 'step' away, harden, hone, and go to town.

Doc.
 
The prev owner of my Wade turret lathe liked to make up little bushings to fit drills in a larger tap holder. They are short lengths of rod, drilled thru for the drill size and cut down the length on a radius so the tap holder's clamp squeezes the holder and binds the drill. Pretty handy way to set up a drill when there isn't clearance for a drill chuck, works for smaller taps too of course.
 
Why Powder Coat?

R.Z.:

Why did you choose Powder Coat for the base? I may be laboring under a misconception, but as I understand it, Powder Coat cannot be "touched up" in the field if it gets scratched. Perhaps there is some great reason to use Powder Coat that I'm not aware of.

Most of us use oil base enamels such as Magnet Paint. Touch-up? No problem!

That really is a handsome little machine. I believe you will have fun with it, and learn a lot from it.

JRR
 
Powder coat is very durable if applied right. if applied with any slip-ups, it is a horrible finish, sliding off in slabs or just not adhering well so it chips off easily.

The downside is as you say, it does not touch up, since it is a heat-flowed material. I have heard of stuff that is supposed to do OK at touch-up (do not recall the name), but you'd need to get a color match, which might be hard, if you like some strange color for machines.......

I don't know if I'd want it for a machine base.
 
-I'm pretty sure he turned that from scratch, out of something like O1 bar stock. I can't find the article, but he's got a write-up, and as I recall, it was something like simply drill in to the desired body OD, then drill the smaller diameter you're turning to, then drill in from the opposite end for whatever relief OD is necessary.

Then mill a quarter of the cutting 'step' away, harden, hone, and go to town.

Doc.

You might be right Doc, I don't remember seeing an article, I talked with Frank about it at the time, and that's how I remember it. Memory and all, I could remember it wrong.

Maybe Frank will stop in and say.

None the less, Frank is full is marvelous ideas and I've learned a great deal from him. :cheers:

Cheers,
Alan
 
This is an experiment for me powdercoating the base. I've used the company for car related parts and they always have OEM machinery that they're also working on. Their work is really excellent, although color matching might be a problem. This lathe will get just hobby use and I can repaint the chip tray with enamel later, if needed. I'll use machine enamel on the lathe. I appreciate the comments!
 
I think he means to powder coat the sheet metal base..... won't hurt it any. And P.C. is not that hot anyhow
 
The baking temp is pretty high, but the metal is 5mm thick, so I don't think it will be an issue. They had other large machine parts in the shop that were less substantial in thickness. I wouldn't have the lathe itself powder coated, of course, because of the temp and also the heavy filler required. As I said, this will be an experiment. I delivered it this morning and it will be finished in about a week. The cost was $150 for media blasting and coating which seemed reasonable.
 
Turret Renovation

The turret assembly was frozen at the dovetails and also at the turret base. After several days of drenching with penetrating oil and tapping with a plastic hammer, I was able to get it mostly disassembled and cleaned. I'm still having trouble getting the turret off of the casting. There's a shaft with a keyway plus a ring with pin spanner holes. I've tried tapping on the shaft with a hammer and brass punch and I've tried turning the ring with an improvised spanner I made from giant angle needle nose pliers with tips ground to match the holes in the rings. No luck with any reasonable force and I tried heating just a bit with a propane torch. I stopped for fear of breaking something. Anybody seen this type of fastening before? Thx!
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Rust Removal

Amazingly the scroll chuck screwed right off by hand, but the jaws were thoroughly stuck. I soaked it for 24 hours in Evapo-Rust, then disassembled the chuck and wire brushed the parts (brass wire) Finally, I polished everything by hand with Simichrome, then ultrasonically cleaned, oiled and reassembled. The results were much better than expected!!
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It does take 5/8" tooling. Frank Fords reducing tooling is really interesting. He has a web page that describes how the tools were made. That small Geometric Die Head is sweet! I'm going to start looking for a 3/4" size but the prices are pretty stiff.
 
It does take 5/8" tooling. Frank Fords reducing tooling is really interesting. He has a web page that describes how the tools were made. That small Geometric Die Head is sweet! I'm going to start looking for a 3/4" size but the prices are pretty stiff.

I'll have to dig around when I have time and see if I can find it. I have never seen that article, but have certainly talked with Frank about turret tooling and his Rambold in the past...it's been a while. I have a Geometric 5/8" DSA, and have quite a number of chasers for it, but primarily have done 10-32 in the past. Sadly, I don't use it too often these days as I don't make very many hand saws. :(

Kind of irony in that I first met Frank at a metalworking group that met in the Bay area, I was seeking to learn how to turn a split-nut as used on the vintage woodworking hand saws. Another gent in the group helped me make the first few on his lathe, and then I adapted it to my little South Bend. When I saw how Frank's turret worked I just drooled, not that I had high volume, but that it takes me about 15-30 minutes to make a single split-nut including the slotting of the washer portion. I use bronze for them.

Turrets are awesome for making screws, those die heads with a sliding bed turret is just amazing for those procedures on the lathe.

I might have some extra turret tooling duplicates I may be willing to part with for a very reasonable price, if you're interested. I have a number of drilling tools, support tooling possibly, centering, stuff like that. And to give Doc a plug here, he made a rotary broach out of a turret tool which is a project I've had on my list for some time...I had bought a turret to adapt to my Rivett lathe, but decided to just use the South Bend 10L for that as I have the lever cross slide as well as the bed turret.

I don't know if Frank looks in on the Antique forum too much. Would be nice to hear his comments, he did replace the bearings or made plain bearings for it (seems it has roller bearings), or something to it. I know he did a few things to get it running.

Cheers,
Alan
 








 
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