Regrinding Ways/Saddle Repair

I'm currently rebuilding a '49 Heavy 10. The ways have about .004" of wear but have many dents in them. You can see them in my rebuild thread. Yesterday I called around within my area and found a company out of NJ that would regrind my ways for $650. Also, they said they would rebuild and scrape my saddle, with Turcite I believe, for another $300.

I have been looking around and found a lot of threads in the Monarch forum on the use of Moglice. I am new to all of this but Moglice seems like it would be the easiest for me to use since I have used epoxies in similar application before.

I'm wondering if anyone else has gone through this process with good success or has used Moglice on a South Bend and what the cost would be as compared to the quote I was given.

I had my 1941 11" Southbend bed reground (actually milled by a custom arrangement of two Bridgeport heads above a planer) because it was extremely swaybacked (1/16" or more) from prior abuse. The local experienced machine restorer built up the saddle with plastic (I don't know which one), reground the cross-slide, reground the compound, raised the tailstock slightly, all for $1200. Included also was minor scraping to fit the cross-slide and compound plus some decorative scraping on the ways to hold oil. He was slightly irked by more wear than he had anticipated. I thought he did a good job, and the lathe has been much improved. I had to do a little work to align the headstock axis and tailstock axis concentric with each other and the ways. It is a treat to drill holes true for once.

Best wishes --- Allen

I'm in the process of rebuilding my 9 and I had the bed ground. I am just rescraping the saddle using the bed as a master. I made a new base under the tailstock to take up the .018" wear,and then align the headstock and tailstock. The bed came out great, and honestly I think better than original. The price you quoated is a little higher than I paid, but only by 150...so not nearly enough to be real significant....it's the quality of the job that matters here.
I'll need to drop the leadscrew to line it up....but that wont be a big deal.
Dave

Mcandrew1894 said:

I'm in the process of rebuilding my 9 and I had the bed ground. I am just rescraping the saddle using the bed as a master. I made a new base under the tailstock to take up the .018" wear,and then align the headstock and tailstock. The bed came out great, and honestly I think better than original. The price you quoated is a little higher than I paid, but only by 150...so not nearly enough to be real significant....it's the quality of the job that matters here.
I'll need to drop the leadscrew to line it up....but that wont be a big deal.
Dave

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Can you PM me with the name of the shop you used? I'm in MA and would love to know a good grinding shop.

I guess that's another possibility. I don't have any real experience scraping although it doesn't look too hard, especially with the bed as a master. I'm trying to keep my costs down as I was not expecting to be doing all of this. I spoke with Deviit (moglice) today and they recommended their Hard Putty for my application. They gave me a formula to figure out how much Moglice I would need and it came out to about 50-60 grams. They sell their 100 gram pack for $42 plus shipping. I have read the Hazmat is another $20, so $62 total.

If you intend to scrape it.....do yourself a favor, and become proficient making something flat first. You have a scraper?...a surface plate you can trust?....its' work!
but it is satisfying. Once you get good at making things flat....you can work on making things parallel...and square....get good at that..and you can scrape a lathe.

It was way more work than I expected too.... and it isn't necessarily cheap either....just come up with a plan...and work the plan

Dave

.004" of wear? That's not bad at all. If you want it better, you can likely get another bed for less than you can get yours reground.

allan

I really just want to do it right. I may just throw it together and see what happens but i have a feeling this is all the lathe I will ever need (ya right). Here are some pics of the dings/dents along my ways. If it weren't for these I wouldn't be considering it so much. The .004" of wear was measured along the tailstock flat way and the bottom of the tailstock vee way where the frosting is still visible. The only spots that are actually where the saddle rides are in the second picture near the headstock. Everything else is on top. I think someone used it as a table.

I know scraping doesn't look too hard. I have been a scraper for 35 years.

It took me 4 years before I began to understand it. It took me 10 before I

considered myself somewhat capable. Forget about Moglice. Your bed is not hard enough.

Moglice on your slide will act as a lapping plate. It is also a pain in the ass to work with.

It really should not be applied in thicknesses of less than 1mm.

If it is worn only .004" then just scrape it to fit the ground bed.

I didn't mean it like that. I meant it looks easier with a good surface to work off of, such as a ground bed since I don't have a surface plate. I would love to learn to do it. I don't have any tools but I would be willing to get some and try it. But what do I know.

If I were to use the Moglice I would mill down the saddle to give the room needed for the minimum 1mm, or .04" as Devitt recommended.

You say it isn't hard enough and that it would act as a lapping plate. Is that because the Moglice is harder than the metal ways? Or are you talking about getting metal shavings underneath it? I don't understand. Would a flame hardened bed make a difference?

0.004 wear on one face of the Vee way
90 degree included angle the vertical drop is .0056, doubles to 0.0112 if both sides of the Vee are equally worn.
60 degree included angle the vertical drop is 0.008, doubles to 0.016 if both sides of the Vee are equally worn.

Mcandrew1894 said:

I'm in the process of rebuilding my 9 and I had the bed ground. I am just rescraping the saddle using the bed as a master. I made a new base under the tailstock to take up the .018" wear,and then align the headstock and tailstock. The bed came out great, and honestly I think better than original. The price you quoated is a little higher than I paid, but only by 150...so not nearly enough to be real significant....it's the quality of the job that matters here.
I'll need to drop the leadscrew to line it up....but that wont be a big deal.
Dave

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Dave!

There you are.

I really enjoyed your rebuild thread on the other forum:

Overhaul of a 9" SB model "A" - Home Model Engine Machinist

Then it just kind of stopped. Pictures disappeared, and your last post was that you would continue it somewhere else. Did you ever pick up that restoration thread somewhere else?

The best part about it was all the scraping information you were posting. Have not seen anyone else scrape the ways when restoring a south bend lathe, so it was all very informative.

Nice to see you're still around.

Cheers

tom_boctou said:

Can you PM me with the name of the shop you used? I'm in MA and would love to know a good grinding shop.

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Add me to that list. Never know when that'd come in handy. I know there is a machine rebuilder in Wilmington close to me is it that one?

iron_junkie said:

Dave!

There you are.

I really enjoyed your rebuild thread on the other forum:

Overhaul of a 9" SB model "A" - Home Model Engine Machinist

Then it just kind of stopped. Pictures disappeared, and your last post was that you would continue it somewhere else. Did you ever pick up that restoration thread somewhere else?

The best part about it was all the scraping information you were posting. Have not seen anyone else scrape the ways when restoring a south bend lathe, so it was all very informative.

Nice to see you're still around.

Cheers

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Well...I ended up not scraping the ways either...I had them ground.
The problem with scraping them is that I would need a master at least 2/3 the length of the bed...which is 54" ...so a 30 inch master
Keeping a master trued would take a 2 x 3 plate at a minimum....

I have NO room for a plate that big! SO I had the bed ground to be used as the master, and then scrape everything eles to it....that way I could get by with my little 12 x 18 plate and a few references that I could make on that...the money ended up being a wash...but I having the bed ground was way less work.

And don't kid yourself people.....its hard tedious work...and it takes patience...and effort...and will.
I am far from an expert on the subject....but the MPL and indicator seem to be telling me I'm getting by.......

Glad you found me...

Dave

Halligan said:

Add me to that list. Never know when that'd come in handy. I know there is a machine rebuilder in Wilmington close to me is it that one?

Click to expand...

Halligan

Check your PM...

Dave

I am a Journeyman Machine Rebuilder and have been teaching Scraping for over 35 years and have been machine rebuilding for 50 years as I learned the trade from my Dad. . I say scraping is easy, but knowing where to scrape and how much to take off is a trade. I have taught over 20,000 people to scrape in a week at hundreds of companies. I have worked with Molglice and Turcite for years. I can see why you want to grind your bed. It is a mess and a new grind will make it look and perform better then new. I would let the pro do it for what did you say under a grand? That's a fair price. Get references though. Your bed is soft, so I would scrape the bed or do a light 1/2 moon on the soft bed because it needs oil retention holes or the bed will wear faster. If it were hard you would not need to do that and the scraping under the saddle would have the oil pockets. I personally know Bruce and Andrew at Devitt/Molice and they sell a good product, but as one guy said it has a learning curve and is messy. You will still have to cut oil pockets in it or it will be a mirror image of the ground surface and no oil will flow. It would look like and act like to gage blocks rung together. Turcite and Rulon are Teflon that is impregnated with bronze and many new machine use it and it is easy to scrape. To equip yourself so you can scrape your looking at a minimum of $500.00 or more plus the learning curve. If you were going to scrape more machines someday then it might be worth it. But if it's a one time deal let the pro do it. Be sure to get a written quote. If you need more info write me at [email protected]

Thank you Mr King. You are quite right. I've given the name of a capable grind house to a few here.

I did mine because I wanted to learn. Let me know when you have classes up in Central Mass.

Thanks again!

Dave

Moglice works best on bed-ways that are hardened and ground.

When I said it will become a lapping plate, I did not mean the chips getting underneath.

The material itself can become abrasive enough to wear down soft ways.

Mr. King, thanks for sharing your knowledge. You make a good point about the tools needed. I did look into that and you're right it wouldn't make sense to do one thing. I would like to learn someday but for now it will probably just be added to my things to do list which is very, very long. I think currently I am going to fastrack getting this machine back together so I can run it for a little while. I have some non-critical projects I would like to do. Once those are done I am definitely going to get this scraped and most likely will have them take care of the whole thing.

Thanks dinosaur for the clarification. I'm glad I asked because there is a lot of good info here.

Please call me Richard. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all :-)