13" SB with reworked bed - worth taking a look?

I've been looking for a first lathe and came across what looks like a good price for a 13" South Bend. The fellow selling it bought it a few years ago as a project and never got around to it, now wants the room in the garage back. I'm happy taking on some work to repair or rebuild to get back into shape, but would like to avoid jumping into an impossible situation due to my ignorance.

He thinks the bed was reworked a while back and sent over a couple of pictures. To my uneducated eye it looks like quite a bit of material was removed (no serial number left?) and has some wear since then. My intended use is mostly hobby and household/farm repair work and this is likely to be my only lathe for quite a long time.

It's a couple hours drive to go see it, so I need to decide whether it's worth checking it out in person, and beyond that if there are any particular issues with having a bed that's been reworked in the past?

He's asking $1350 for the lathe with a little tooling (3-jaw chuck, some collets, some cutters) and a phase converter, or lathe with no extras for $850. Unfortunately it's not under power. From what I've seen similar sized South Bends without tooling are typically listed for $1500 to $3000 around here.

Thanks for any words of wisdom, and let me know if I left anything important out. Hoping to be able to start a renovation thread sometime soon.

shpxnz.., Sir,
Looks like a decent machine.. Knowing what I know now about SB's I'd gamble on it. Get the phase converter ( especially if it's a rotary ). That machine will teach you alot and be a good machine.. I'd be surprised if it's really bodged up. If you don't mind where is it located ?
Happy hunting
Stay safe
Calvin
PS your money will be in all the attachments for it anyways...

It's a little hard to tell from the pictures but it looks to me like the bed was attacked rather than reworked. The "frosting" marks should not have obvious depth to them as is shown in the picture. It reminds me of a Heavy 10 I looked at some years back. The bed looked a lot like that except the scrape marks were even deeper. I asked him about that and he said that some sort of traveling band of machinery scrapers had come by and offered to rejuvenate his bed for him. They made a horrid mess out of it and I had to walk away from it.

If I were you, I'd be very careful about that lathe you're looking at. It may be perfectly functional but make sure. The fact that there's no serial number should also ring an alarm bell or two.

Dobermann said:

It's a little hard to tell from the pictures but it looks to me like the bed was attacked rather than reworked. The "frosting" marks should not have obvious depth to them as is shown in the picture. It reminds me of a Heavy 10 I looked at some years back. The bed looked a lot like that except the scrape marks were even deeper. I asked him about that and he said that some sort of traveling band of machinery scrapers had come by and offered to rejuvenate his bed for him. They made a horrid mess out of it and I had to walk away from it.

If I were you, I'd be very careful about that lathe you're looking at. It may be perfectly functional but make sure. The fact that there's no serial number should also ring an alarm bell or two.

Click to expand...

There is a reason that serial number is gone....

The area where it is stamped is not a bearing surface and the ways would have needed to be in really bad shape to need any grinding in that area. .

The saddle would also have needed building back up to the original height to maintain orentation with the lead screw... I would sure check the saddle to see if that had been done.

Thanks for the input guys!

calvin b said:

If you don't mind where is it located ?

Click to expand...

The lathe is in eastern PA on craiglist.

swatkins said:

The saddle would also have needed building back up to the original height to maintain orentation with the lead screw... I would sure check the saddle to see if that had been done.

Click to expand...

Is there a good way to check that without too much disassembly?

Are you guys thinking the serial might be gone so as not to be traceable?

I guess I should also be asking, in the worst case if it turned out to be a disaster, would I have a decent chance of getting my money back parting it out? That's definitely not what I want to do, but it's good to have a backup plan.

When you remove metal from the bed's v's and flats you must then increase the height of the saddle's v or flat surfaces. Here is a picture of a saddle that looks like it is being repaired with a material similar to Trucite. The Trucite is glued to the metal and then scraped to the correct height and shape. Without adding material the saddle sets too low on the bed v's and the lead screw will bind.

You would need to look to see if there is any extra material glued to the bottom of the saddle.

Personally I would never consider a machine that has had the serial number ground off. Who knows the real reason is and there are too many good machines out there....

Another reason to pass( other than the ways look awful)

As noted to necessitate removing the serial means a lot of material was removed from the bed, it has an x braced bed and that usually(always?)means it was a hard bed, the removal of that much material probably means it ain't hard anymore.

As everyone else has mentioned, that bed looks awful. I would only buy it if he could run the lathe through all of the functions and do some test cuts to prove that everything is still in alignment.

btm

Thanks again for all the responses.

I'll pass on this one and keep waiting for the right SB to come along.