Lucky -
Thanks for the props!
Has anyone here ever finished one of the lightweights?
Some 35 or so SE's in 3 batches were sold; but IIRC less than 10 were lightweights, in the last batch.
I always machined (later planed) them rough to be sure the castings were sound, as well as to prep them for heat treat at Elmira Heat Treating. I did not have them thermal stress relieved until after rough machining, to get the most benefit.
I do know that despite that, the solid SE's sometimes may bow down a few tenths or so over a year after the first scrape, and need touched up the next few uses over a year or so. It depends on your approach to scraping - with a biax, after HT, mine could mostly go straight to scraping after receipt, unless you wanted to change the dovetail angle, or don't like the idea of scraping up to maybe .005 - .006 off the ends quickly, to get the hollow out. Some don't like to use a biax aggressively, and would prefer to machine the last .005 if possible. Of course if you are stick scraping, that is understandable.
What I always wondered, is how the hollow/lightweights did with any telegraphing over the webs. Did the bottoms stay flat, or did the verticals telegraph when spotted, and if so how long until they settled down? The casting design, in theory, was as good as any B & S, as far as the thickness of the parts and the spacing of the webbing, so should not have been any different. But a person always wonders.
The only lightweight I kept was a poor casting (cope-drag shift from rough handling on the line, + some bad sand inclusions), sectioned to show it was scrapped, so the foundry was supposed to give a credit for these defective castings.
The lightweight was about 10 lbs lighter than a solid, if the solid was left full size (thickness)
I also sort of expected the lightweight to be more stable over all, as the sections were similar in size throughout the casting.
The castings tend to be a little rough due to the hot pours - mine were all class 40, though HT can modify that.
If anyone ever sees/hears of the patterns out there, I'd sure like to have them back.
The design is pretty distinctive. Not likely belonging to anyone else. Of course logically, they are probably long gone in the landfill.
I've thought of making another set of patterns, but as anyone who has done so knows, the return is pretty low unless somehow a person could sell a dozen at a time shipped to one address. Harder and harder to find a foundry, too.
smt
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