LeBlond Regal 1960s vintage lathe bedways, scraped or not scraped?

Hello All,

I'm possibly buying a Leblond Regal lathe, 16"x42", 1960s vintage. From the photos I saw of it online, the bedways don't appear to be scraped, no frosting/flaking visible. When I asked the owner about this, he insisted that the ways are smooth, and always have been smooth.

I was under the impression that all lathe bedways (and milling machines for that matter) had scraped ways. Is that not the case?

What I'm driving at here is if the lathe did have flaking, but no longer does, then it's obviously seen a lot of wear. If it never had flaking, then it's possibly still in good shape, and would be worth the long drive to go check it out.

Thank you for your help.

Have you ever owned a lathe or mill before? Not snarky, serious question.

That Leblond may have either hardened and ground steel bed ways, or regular hardened and ground ways. The tailstock ways might have been scraped originally.

Richard King went on a whole tirade once about how the cross slide and compound on all Leblonds were hand scraped. I call BS. The ones I have worked on were pretty cheaply built. The cross slide and compound ways were milled with a dovetail cutter. The gibs are scraped, that's about it.

You're talking about a 50+ year old machine. Typical scraping depth is .0005 max. If that machine doesn't have .0005 wear on every surface of every slide, it must have never been used.

ewlsey said:

Have you ever owned a lathe or mill before? Not snarky, serious question.

Click to expand...

I have not. Looking to buy both, and trying to find machines that aren't worn out beyond usefulness. Which is why I'm asking questions here.

OK. Get yourself a dial indicator and a mag base and try to shake the cross slide and compound at a few points on their travel.

Here is a video I made on the subject.

ewlsey said:

OK. Get yourself a dial indicator and a mag base and try to shake the cross slide and compound at a few points on their travel.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I have both an indicator and a mag base on an arm. I've used it to evaluate local machines. This LeBlond regal is a few hundred miles from me, which is why I was curious about flaking/frosting being on the ways originally or not. I don't want to make the drive to find out it's badly worn out.

On that note, what sort of tolerances should I be looking for when I do these test? (watching your video now, maybe you answer that in the video...)

1. The last LeBlond I went to see had 7 thou wear from headstock to tail stock on the ways when I attached the mag base to the carriage and ran it the full length of the bedways.

2. Cross slide had 3.5 thou deflection when I pushed it up and down, 15 thou backlash.

3. Compound had 5 thou deflection when pushed up and down, 15 thou backlash.

4. when the halfnut is engaged with the leadscrew, the carriage can be moved 12 thou back and forth if you crank on the handle that transverses the carriage along the bedways.

Likely some of the backlash and wear could be taken up by adjusting gibbs, etc, but I'm curious what sort of tolerances I should be looking for here.

Thank you.

That's a decent amount of wear for an old machine. Lathes can be extremely worn and still make good parts.

ewlsey said:

That's a decent amount of wear for an old machine. Lathes can be extremely worn and still make good parts.

Click to expand...

"Decent" meaning acceptable? I watched your video, lots of good info, thank you. I've downloaded the mentioned book and will give it a read.

It depends on the work you want to do. I would consider that amount of wear to be plenty usable.

In my opinion after slideway grinders came out scraping every way (ie:both the moving and non moving parts of each way) was only ever done by two sorts of companies.

Those making extremely accurate machines or those making bog standard machines that wanted to send their company bankrupt.

crtten said:

Hello All,

I'm possibly buying a Leblond Regal lathe, 16"x42", 1960s vintage. From the photos I saw of it online, the bedways don't appear to be scraped, no frosting/flaking visible. When I asked the owner about this, he insisted that the ways are smooth, and always have been smooth.

I was under the impression that all lathe bedways (and milling machines for that matter) had scraped ways. Is that not the case?

What I'm driving at here is if the lathe did have flaking, but no longer does, then it's obviously seen a lot of wear. If it never had flaking, then it's possibly still in good shape, and would be worth the long drive to go check it out.

Thank you for your help.

Click to expand...

Post a photo. My LeBlond Regal has hard steel ways bolted to the cast iron bed. it was never scraped where the carriage runs, the tailstock ways were scraped though.

ewlsey said:

Richard King went on a whole tirade once about how the cross slide and compound on all Leblonds were hand scraped. I call BS. The ones I have worked on were pretty cheaply built. The cross slide and compound ways were milled with a dovetail cutter. The gibs are scraped, that's about it.

Click to expand...

My Leblond compound was scraped, top side of the cross-slide was scraped as well. Wear on the cross-slide was too severe to determine if it was scraped but why scrape the compound & top of cross-slide and not the rest?

moonlight machine said:

Post a photo. My LeBlond Regal has hard steel ways bolted to the cast iron bed. it was never scraped where the carriage runs, the tailstock ways were scraped though.

Click to expand...

This^

In the mid-fifties LeBlond introduced the hardened steel ways to the Regal line; they even changed the design of the Roundheads to incorporate the steel ways I believe (my late-model Roundhead Dual-Drive made in 1954 has them). If this machine is from the 60's it should be a square-head Regal and would almost HAVE to have the hardened steel ways (I've never seen a square-head that didn't have them). The hardened steel ways are ground and very smooth. The bottom of the saddle may or may not be scraped (mine didn't bear any evidence of it). The tailstock ways were most definitely scraped on my machine but in the 60's they may have quit doing it by then.

crtten said:

Hello All,

I'm possibly buying a Leblond Regal lathe, 16"x42", 1960s vintage. From the photos I saw of it online, the bedways don't appear to be scraped, no frosting/flaking visible. When I asked the owner about this, he insisted that the ways are smooth, and always have been smooth.

I was under the impression that all lathe bedways (and milling machines for that matter) had scraped ways. Is that not the case?

What I'm driving at here is if the lathe did have flaking, but no longer does, then it's obviously seen a lot of wear. If it never had flaking, then it's possibly still in good shape, and would be worth the long drive to go check it out.

Thank you for your help.

Click to expand...

There is another reason for a lathe not showing any signs of scraping on the ways. The ways could have be re-ground at some point in the past.

Regards Tyrone.