Gibraltar type toolpost

Has anyone built a toolpost to use on a 9" SouthBend after removing the compound? I have seen a kit and plans for one on a Myford.I might have been using the wrong terminology with Google.

gwelo62 said:

Has anyone built a toolpost to use on a 9" SouthBend after removing the compound? I have seen a kit and plans for one on a Myford.I might have been using the wrong terminology with Google.

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I haven't seen a "commercial" offering outside of British "model engineering" circles in scores of years.
They do NOT need to be all nice smooth-curved swoopy shapes, though to get similar rigidity goodness.

Common industry practice, long, long time ago, was to make a relatively smaller base to mount seriously larger 4-Way to the cross.

The ones we used wanted two men and a traveling crane to swap for a compound rest and smaller 4-Way the rare times we used a compound at all..

That was not for threading, BTW. We did that "straight-in" with the big 4-Way.

For a small SB 9? Dead-easy to find an oversized 4-Way. Then all you have to fab is the modest chunk of metal to connect its base to the cross and set the height were it needs to be.

Challenge is that using the compound's old mount on the top slide gives-away a great deal of the goodness you are chasing. It just isn't that strong. FWIW- an SB 9 doesn't really have enough stiffness anywhere in it to make best use of all that "extra" stiffness to begin with.

Not a slam. They were only meant to be light lathes, and they are not half bad at that.
Your effort might have a better payback to upgrade the entire machine to a heavier lathe.
No add-on is ever going to make any nine-inch SB into a nine-inch Hendey Tool & Gage!

Agreed...too much flex everywhere else to make a difference....but if you add a full length cross slide then it CAN help....casting kits and lots of good ideas here...

Metal Lathe