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1904-1907 Leblond Lathe

Wes Henderson

Plastic
Joined
Apr 26, 2017
I recently picked up a 1904 to 1907 Leblond lathe. The mechanical integrity of it is great; however, it could definitely benefit from some aesthetic attention. It is approximately a 12 x 36. I'll post pictures and update as I go, but I will be completely restoring the old girl.
 
Could you email me some of the pictures of your LeBlond lathe. I have one from around 1908 and would like to compare them,20170404_134558 (3).jpg
This a picture of mine.
 
Could you email me some of the pictures of your LeBlond lathe. I have one from around 1908 and would like to compare them,View attachment 197834
This a picture of mine.

I am trying to post them here, without any luck. The mobile and tablet site allows me to select a file but it never loads. I'll attempt to get on my pclater tonight and upload them.

Currently I have the motor torn apart for a rebuild.
 
Full Lathe 1.jpg

Full Lathe 2.jpg

Head Side 1.jpg

Head Side 2.jpg

Head Side Gears.jpg
I realize I am missing two cast iron gear covers. If anyone has a similar lathe, I would very much love to borrow them so I could create copies.
 
Overhead Cone Pulley 1.jpg

Saddle 1.jpg

Saddle 2.jpg

Tail Stock 1.jpg
The tailstock is already disassembled in this picture. I used it as a test piece for stripping paint via different methods.

Taper Attach 1.jpg
I am missing some parts to the taper attachment. If anyone has these, would you mind posting pictures?
 
Well, after much delay (thanks to the Navy), she is finally running. She still needs some work, but I completely went through the compound slide; cleaning, adjusting and fixing as I went. Not too much there to complain about. The apron on the other hand... everything works great except for the feed. The main gear you engage between the longitudinal hand wheel and the feed selector sounds like it's binding or has something broken that I can't see. I'll be pulling the apron off today and doing a complete teardown on her too.
 
The Daunting Task Begins...

Well, upon removing the apron (which was a nightmare in itself), I found a chip that had become pressed into one of the gears of the feed engage. I'll probably start uploading and documenting soon, but I have decided to completely rebuild her from the ground up. I already have the apron and quick change gearbox completely disassembled. More to follow.
 
Very unfortunately, the previous owner has done a substantial amount of "work" to this lathe. I see myself fixing many of the botched repair jobs. Probably the most annoying thing thus far is that the bolt holding the acme lead screw and feed rod end cap on was sheared. It's below the surface and domed which will make extracting it quite painful. Furthermore, it meant that removing the apron involved removing the quick-change gear box along with the feed rod and lead screw.
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First, the telescoping gear and associated bracket need to be removed considering that the quick change gear box needs to be slid horizontally out past the left end (headstock end). The QCGB output is the connected directly to the feed rod. The lead screw has a sliding gear (clutch) on the inside end of the quick-change gear box. Ergo, the feed rod is rotating any time the QCGB is engaged. On this particular lathe, this can be problematic as there is no safety to prevent the feed and lead from being engaged at the same time. If that were to happen, something WILL break. I am hoping to rectify this by making a safety of my own so that I needn't worry about overlooking it at some point.
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The lead screw and clutch gear. The feed rod came out with the QCGB due to a taper pin connecting it to the CQGB output shaft.
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The QCGB with the selecting gears and shaft already removed. Fortunately not a single tooth on any of the box's gears are damaged. I find it curious that the box itself is "open". It does not hold oil, but instead drains out the bottom... I may change that design as well as add a small belt or gear driven oil pump with a filter and neodymium magnets to help separate particulates, chips, etc. Input would be appreciated for that idea.
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Back side of the apron for reference and picture porn.
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It's difficult to see, but the chip was pressed into the mating gear that caused damage to the one showing wear on the teeth. The chip was actually pressing the teeth on the other gear and causing a "hammered" appearance that then widened. The next time that tooth came around it would mesh with the instigating gear and something had to give. I was able to use a fine pick to remove the chip and will simply regrind the widened teeth by hand until I can use the lathe to recreate the gear itself later on.
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Amazingly enough, everything up to this point has come apart quite easily. The exception would be the center sleeve on the apron. No amount of PROPER coercing could convince it to come loose. I tried heating the apron and cooling the sleeve while wrenching on it among everything else I could think of before deciding that the integrity of the piece remaining intact was more valuable than separating the two. This shows the many layers of paint; some properly applied and some not so properly.
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And here is the image of it after brushing aircraft paint remover (two coats spaced five minutes apart), then naphtha to remove any residue and prevent flash rust, light sanding on non-precision surfaces with 320 and then 600. After this I baked the apron around 200F and wiped with mineral spirits to help remove any oils further in the grain.
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NOTE: On machines of this age there was dangerously high levels of lead in the paint, as most people know. One thing many people are unaware of though is that before Bondo was approved and used industrially, a lead and tin mix was used as a metal filler. I've encountered a fair amount of it used to smooth deep casting imperfections or blend parting lines. Be an adult please and do your own research, but I always ventilate my shop, wear a p100 respirator (for sanding, scraping, sweeping, EVERYTHING) as well as properly dispose of paint chips, solvents and anything that could have collected the lead.

The simple age of the lathe and its paint is reason enough for me to have wanted to refinish her. I love the appeal and look of natural metals. However; without being permitted to have my electroplating and electroless plating setup in my current housing community and not wishing to spend the money to have parts plated, I'll be going for a paint scheme that is as close to different natural metals as possible. I've messed around with automotive parts, painting them to resemble natural metal appearances with positive results and will do my best to replicate the same with spray paint epoxies.
 
On a side note, I'll be calling Leblond tomorrow to see if they can offer up any information on my lathe. I have the patent numbers on the QCGB plate and the serial number is stamped into the bed ways on the tail stock end. Here is to hoping.

Furthermore, I'll post amplifying images and pictures of how individual components function once I repair and rebuild parts of the lathe. I feel it would make for better images if the parts are cleaned and properly adjusted.

Lastly, I am all self-taught. I'm not a professional by any means. I've spent thousands of hours reading everything I know and much of that to actual practice. If I say anything with certainty and someone here with more experience than myself has something constructive to contribute, then by all means please do so. I'm only 26 and feel like I was born about 60 years later than I would have like to have been.
 
One more thing for tonight. I was looking into belt replacement. Leather belts aren't all that resistant to the oils and elements. Then after doing some reading into the other materials you can purchase belts in I noticed that the alternatives were significantly expensive. I was able to contact McMaster Carr about the composition of their lathe belts and noticed they were the same as conveyor belting. I proceeded to doing some shopping and found some 3 ply conveyor belting with an acceptable tensile strength. The narrowest size I could find was in 6 inch widths, ordered by the foot. I purchased enough to belt the entire lathe and will cut it the width and length. There is an article on how companies bond belts in factories by "stepping" them, using a vulcanizer and then stitching the steps. I'll post more on that once the lathe comes back together and I get to the point of putting belts back on her.
 
Well, Leblond was more than less than helpful. They claim that they don't have any records dating before the 1950s.

The number stamped on the tailstock end of the bedways is 959 or 9 59. I know early on they had lot and number stamps before switching to serial numbers, but I don't know the specificities to tell the difference.
 
Wes:

It is interesting that LeBlond told you they did not have information on lathes built prior to the 1950's. When I got my 13" Roundhead Regal lathe, I emailed LeBlond with the serial number. Within 24 hours, Dwight Engel (IIRC) got back to me with the date the lathe was shipped (26 July, 1943) & the original owner who ordered the lathe. I was surprised by the quick response, the fact the original owner's name/city was furnished, and the fact no fee was asked for the information.

This was back in 2012, so not that long ago. Possibly, LeBlond has some kind of vague cutoff as to when their records of serial numbers for their lathes cease to exist. The fact your lathe has a quick change feed/thread gearbox seems like it might have been made at a point in time when LeBlond has some records. I know in the early history of LeBlond, R.K. LeBlond was not solidly in the business of building lathes but was building lathes, other machine tools, other machinery, and parts of machine tools for other firms as well as under their own name. There was a move or two of the LeBlond shops as the business began to grow. At some point, LeBlond became a "stand alone" machine tool builder, and at some point also, they moved onto the site of their main plant. Possibly, your lathe predates the move to the main plant location, and as a result, records might be non existant. Still, seeing the quick change gearbox on your lathe came out of the plant which eventually grew into LeBlond's huge plant.

I wonder if there is some sort of history of LeBlond lathes which would at least give approximate years that things like the quick change gearbox was introduced. Of note is the fact that LeBlond stuck with that basic quick change gearbox design right through the end of the "Roundhead Regal" lathe production (early 1950's ?).

Most quick change gearboxes of this type were "total loss" as far as oiling is concerned. Not enough oil is used to warrant any sort of recovery/recirculation system.
Put the oil in with a pump type oil can and let it drip out the bottom. My old Regal lathe and both of my South Bend lathes are built with "open bottom" quick change gearboxes. This system works fine, and hundreds of thousands of lathes used it, often in heavy machine work or in production shops. Kind of a simple and bulletproof design that has endured until recent years. On my Roundhead Regal's quick change gearbox, there is a note on the thread/feed plate stating that the tumbler lever (the sliding gear selector lever on the cylinder with the holes in it) is to be placed in a certain position in order to oil the quick change gears. There is a cast iron plate on a spring-loaded pivot pin on top of the quick change box. This plate swings to allow access to the oil holes. A few pumps of the oil can as part of the starting procedure for the lathe and it is good to go. On my old Regal lathe, there is a chip pan with a sump for recirculating/flood coolant. The result is all the lube oil which started in the quick change box winds up in the chip pan coolant sump sooner or later. I accept old machine tools as they were built, realizing that while the design might be a few light years behind modern machinery, it worked fine and endured. A few changes here and there, perhaps, but nothing radical.

For belting, you might contact Troy Belting (now known as Troy Industrial Solutions) in Watervliet, NY. Troy is a great firm, and I've dealt with them for over 30 years. They routinely make up belting of all shapes and sizes. Rather than cutting down some conveyor belting, if you have not bought it as yet, you might contact Troy Belting. They have flat belting in various thicknesses and widths and should be able to make up a piece of belting for your lathe with "lacing hooks". These are steel "staples" which form a hinge at the ends of the belt and are joined with a pin (used to be rawhide, now plastic). Belting with lacing hooks is more common than not on machine tools like your lathe and is a well proven thing. The beauty of the lacing hooks is it allows you to install the belt without taking the headstock apart.

I do engineering and machine work at a museum called Hanford Mills here in NY State. Hanford Mills has loads of working line shafting, countershafts, and machinery as well as a water wheel and two steam engines. All of the belting is made up with the lacing hooks, and much of it has been purchased at Troy Belting. We have a "lacing machine" at the Mill and an assortment of lacing hooks so we can make up (or shorten) belts as needed. Glued splices or vulcanized splices on belting are used in places where the little irregularity in the rotation that happens from the lacing hooks cannot be tolerated. Usually, this happens on high speed precision grinder spindle drives or other very high speed applications. The sound of flat belts and the soft "click" as the lacing hooks go over the pulleys (heard mainly on new belting, before the hooks really seat down into the belting) is something I first heard as a kid around lineshaft driven machine tools, and it is a reassuring sound. Like the total loss oiling on these old lathes, belting made up with lacing hooks works so well that it survived to the end of flat belt driven machine tools and is still in use.
 








 
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