March MN Scraping Class Project - Scraping the compound slide of an Axelson Lathe

[Richard King]

As many of you know I teach Machine rebuilding classes. I am just completing a 5 day class I held inside my Home shop here in Minnesota. One of my students Jason brought the cross-slide and compound of his small Axelson Lathe. I will post some photo's too. That machine as a few of the Monarch lathes has an odd design for the swivel compound. Most lathes use a steel stud that is pressed into the compound slide that fits onto the cross-slide so you can swivel when off-setting the compound. These machines have a cast iron stud that is cast into the slide. It can be a real pain when scraping them. I have a cast iron surface plate that must be 75 years old my Dad bored a hole into so you can blue up the bottom of the bottom slide of the compound and indicate the top flats co-planer to the bottom. Today is day 4 of the 5 day class, so Will add more pictures as we progress. This machine was used and abused. I told Jason he should mill the slide first, but he wanted to scrape it. The bottom swivel part of the casting was .004" worn where the hold down bolts fit into the T-Slot. The flat top side was worn with a .009" . See pictures.

 

[Richard King]

Yesterday we finished the class. The Axelson compound slide dovetails were out of parallel .012" and Jason didn't finish it in class. He is going to buy a dovetail cutter and mill it when he gets back to his shop. Joe finished up his Brown & Sharp 60" camelback...40 PPI. Joe bought 5 straight-edges on a online auction for $200.00 what a deal.. and Ivan finished up my South Bend compound. I snapped a couple of other pictures. One where I showed them how to scrape with a spoon scraper and how to scrape Turcite. Hope to have another class in June of July. I have to have some surgery on Tuesday.....sucks getting old.