bought a 14 1/2"--16" x 12' bed south bend lathe

i haven't been here in a while and have a question on the year of this lathe i bought. south bend catalog # 8117-h serial # 123737. its a 3 hp single tumbler machine that i bought from a 120 year old textile mill not to far away from me (been sitting for the last 50 years near there boiler room). just wanted to know what year it was built. my old buddy john oder might be able to help me with this because my serial number books show me nothing on this lathe. thanks for any help....kenny

1942.

You can check these links out:
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/south-bend-lathes/serial-numbers-wanted-128483/

http://www.wswells.com/serial_number.html

Hi Kenny - 1942

Thanks to Mr. Wells we have this from that year. This catalog only lists the 8117 up to 8 foot bed, so maybe you have a special order

http://www.wswells.com/data/catalog/100B/cat_100B.pdf

toolingking said:

i haven't been here in a while and have a question on the year of this lathe i bought. south bend catalog # 8117-h serial # 123737. its a 3 hp single tumbler machine that i bought from a 120 year old textile mill not to far away from me (been sitting for the last 50 years near there boiler room). just wanted to know what year it was built. my old buddy john oder might be able to help me with this because my serial number books show me nothing on this lathe. thanks for any help....kenny

Click to expand...

BTW, the -117 Catalog No. indicates a 16". The 8 in front of the 117 indicates the toolroom version, so should come with a taper attachment, chip pan, and a few other goodies if they're still together with the machine. The H suffix is the bed length, which in your case comes with an additional sliding leadscrew support and a middle leg.

Add some photos so we can get a look at her.

thanks for the info guys. bought the build sheet from grizzly yesterday and found out it was bought by uncle sam. u s ordnance project at the twin city plant. ordered 9-9-41 and shipped 2-9-42 from south bend. its got the taper attachment and full chip pan. gonna put the new nuts in compound and crosslide along with new labels. i'll post photos in a week or so.....kenny

toolingking said:

bought the build sheet from grizzly yesterday

Click to expand...

You'll notice the build tag has several pieces of info in addition to the delivery date and serno. You'll find a few fields with things like "P10" or "M5" under the crossfeed gear or rack & pinion gear. My understanding after talking to Ted is that these notations indicate oversized (plus ten thou) or undersized (minus five thou) parts that were hand picked to account for tolerance stackups during the build process. "STD" means it measured where they expected it to be.

If you're ever buying those parts online (or NOS from someone like Ted), you might run into an issue using them. For instance, maybe your rack pinion gear needed to be on the small side when it was new but has since worn to where it's loose. You might not want to replace it with a "minus" pinion which would introduce more slop unless you shim the rack down to meet it.

Just FYI, usually not a problem for most parts after everything else wears in over the years.