Joe Michaels
Diamond
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2004
- Location
- Shandaken, NY, USA
At long last, we got my 13" "Roundhead" LeBlond Regal lathe home. It was an interesting day on Saturday, what with the frenzy surrounding the approach of Hurricane Sandy. A buddy of mine from the powerplant met us at the yard where the lathe was. As I had posted previously, the lathe was in the house of a deceased man who'd hoarded a load of machine tools along with about 3000 cars, any number of trucks, a few busses, and parts of locomotives, tugboats, and anything else that looked good or caught his interest. We arrived to find the owner, who is the son of the deceased owner, getting ready to build a flood control dike at his house. Last year, Irene blasted a torrent of water through the daylight basement of the house and did structural damage. This year, the owner had a few loads of clay and Item 4 dumped off as material for the dike to turn the water away from the house. Needless to say, there was some urgency to our getting the machine tools loaded out.
My buddy got a dandy Walker-Turner band saw with the extra low geared speed range for sawing metal, and a 10" "Bell base" South Bend Engine Lathe. The Southbend has the "modern" bronze spindle bearings, 2-tumbler quick change box, taper attachment, and has a single phase motor. The Southbend was an ex-Onteora High School machine, so not really worn or hard used. $300 for the bandsaw, $500 for the South Bend lathe.
We started by walking the area, and my buddy determined he'd need to take down a tree to manuver his trailer ( the site being on ledge rock, with tight turns, lots of junked cars and heavy equipment, and no clear shot to get in with the trailer). After taking down the tree and walking the area to be sure he would not hang his truck and trailer on something like an old truck rear hiding in the weeds, my buddy got the trailer spotted. We started by sliding the bandsaw to the door of the building,which meant moving a big old iron-block B & S engine, a few vintage outboard motors, loads of smaller car and truck parts and bits of tooling. The owner had a J-D tracked loader, and we got the bandsaw up in the air and onto the trailer. That was the easy part. Of course, the owner was anxious to run the tracked loader accross the road to his house to build the dike.
The 10" South Bend lathe we had picked out was behind another 10" South Bend engine lathe (single tumbler quick change box, cast iron spindle bearings), so we had to move that one first. We first had to move a Wyson "jump shear" (heavier than it looked, no way to get rollers under it). That was a job with pinch bars and shoving. Then, we went after the South Bend that was blocking removal of my buddy's lathe. We used a pinch bar, got it up on some planks, which we clinch nailed. We then used some scrap pipe as rollers. We got the older South Bend "parallel parked" to the jump shear. We then got my buddy's South Bend onto some old planks, clinch nailed the lathe to the planks, and used the pipe rollers. That went onto the trailer with a comealong.
My LeBlond lathe was the last machine tool out in our load. We pinch barred the LeBlond away from the wall (it was jammed at the rear of the accumulated machine tools and junk). I'd brought a load of rough-cut 4 x 4's from our local sawmill. We had the chainsaw, so cut the skid timbers to length and put a 45 degree 'sled runner cut' on the ends. We used the pinch bar and pipe rollers, and the LeBlond was out the door. The comealong slid it up the trailer bed.
We then had to hunt the tooling for the South Bend, and managed to piece together a good 4 jaw chuck, ball bearing live center, 4-sided tool post, lantern tool post, and a set of toolholders. A box of Hardinge 5C collets also came along, and a production collet closer (lever at the spindle nose end) was on the lathe.
We bound the load and headed to my house, some 30 miles away. At my house, we slid the LeBlond lathe along the trailer bed by pulling it with my tractor. We pulled her off the beavertail of the trailer so one end of the skids gently touched down on the ground. We then jacked and cribbed the other end and my buddy pulled the trailer out. We let the tailstock end down using some dunnage and a pinch bar, and then pulled the lathe into the garage with the tractor, sliding her skids on plywood.
I wiped the lathe down with Royal Purple degreaser, and hosed it off selectively (floor drain box in the garage to catch the water). The lathe had been covered with a solid layer of old oil and grunge. The Royal Purple took it down to the paint like nothing I had ever used. Cold water in a light spray, no pressure washer. Under the grunge, the lathe shows a nice off-white enamel paint job. Really neatly done. As I cleaned the bed ways with diesel fuel and rags, I found some of the original scraping is still there. I spent odd moments of the weekend cleaning the LeBlond lathe, freeing up some of the parts that were stuck from gummed oil and grunge, lubricating and generally getting to know the lathe. I mucked out the coolant tank, cleaned the chip pan, and found more odds and ends of small tools and toolbits in the accumulated swarf and old oil.
My buddy was making chips with the South Bend Lathe and the bandsaw yesterday (Sunday). I spent the day getting ready for Hurricane Sandy, getting groceries, gasoline cans filled for the welder, more diesel fuel for the tractor, and filling our water containers and Coleman lanterns. In between moving stuff around in the garage, I kept tinkering with the LeBlond lathe, mainly just cleaning. The next move for the LeBlond lathe is down into our basement, which will take some more old time rigging.
Yesterday, taking off the "pick off" gear cover (between the spindle stud gear and quick change box), I found a puzzler. The puzzler is on the "screw gear" (the biggest gear on the input to the quick change box), there are TWO different sizes of gear on the shaft. Only one is in mesh with an idler gear, the other is just there as a spacer or can be thrown into mesh by swapping it with the larger bull gear and adjusting the slotted link accordingly. In the cabinet base leg, I found a set of loose change gears, same face width and pitch as the pick off gears. I got a copy of "running the Regal", but no mention is made of transposing gears for cutting metric thread pitches. Could this be a set of extra loose change gears for metric threads ?
My buddy got a dandy Walker-Turner band saw with the extra low geared speed range for sawing metal, and a 10" "Bell base" South Bend Engine Lathe. The Southbend has the "modern" bronze spindle bearings, 2-tumbler quick change box, taper attachment, and has a single phase motor. The Southbend was an ex-Onteora High School machine, so not really worn or hard used. $300 for the bandsaw, $500 for the South Bend lathe.
We started by walking the area, and my buddy determined he'd need to take down a tree to manuver his trailer ( the site being on ledge rock, with tight turns, lots of junked cars and heavy equipment, and no clear shot to get in with the trailer). After taking down the tree and walking the area to be sure he would not hang his truck and trailer on something like an old truck rear hiding in the weeds, my buddy got the trailer spotted. We started by sliding the bandsaw to the door of the building,which meant moving a big old iron-block B & S engine, a few vintage outboard motors, loads of smaller car and truck parts and bits of tooling. The owner had a J-D tracked loader, and we got the bandsaw up in the air and onto the trailer. That was the easy part. Of course, the owner was anxious to run the tracked loader accross the road to his house to build the dike.
The 10" South Bend lathe we had picked out was behind another 10" South Bend engine lathe (single tumbler quick change box, cast iron spindle bearings), so we had to move that one first. We first had to move a Wyson "jump shear" (heavier than it looked, no way to get rollers under it). That was a job with pinch bars and shoving. Then, we went after the South Bend that was blocking removal of my buddy's lathe. We used a pinch bar, got it up on some planks, which we clinch nailed. We then used some scrap pipe as rollers. We got the older South Bend "parallel parked" to the jump shear. We then got my buddy's South Bend onto some old planks, clinch nailed the lathe to the planks, and used the pipe rollers. That went onto the trailer with a comealong.
My LeBlond lathe was the last machine tool out in our load. We pinch barred the LeBlond away from the wall (it was jammed at the rear of the accumulated machine tools and junk). I'd brought a load of rough-cut 4 x 4's from our local sawmill. We had the chainsaw, so cut the skid timbers to length and put a 45 degree 'sled runner cut' on the ends. We used the pinch bar and pipe rollers, and the LeBlond was out the door. The comealong slid it up the trailer bed.
We then had to hunt the tooling for the South Bend, and managed to piece together a good 4 jaw chuck, ball bearing live center, 4-sided tool post, lantern tool post, and a set of toolholders. A box of Hardinge 5C collets also came along, and a production collet closer (lever at the spindle nose end) was on the lathe.
We bound the load and headed to my house, some 30 miles away. At my house, we slid the LeBlond lathe along the trailer bed by pulling it with my tractor. We pulled her off the beavertail of the trailer so one end of the skids gently touched down on the ground. We then jacked and cribbed the other end and my buddy pulled the trailer out. We let the tailstock end down using some dunnage and a pinch bar, and then pulled the lathe into the garage with the tractor, sliding her skids on plywood.
I wiped the lathe down with Royal Purple degreaser, and hosed it off selectively (floor drain box in the garage to catch the water). The lathe had been covered with a solid layer of old oil and grunge. The Royal Purple took it down to the paint like nothing I had ever used. Cold water in a light spray, no pressure washer. Under the grunge, the lathe shows a nice off-white enamel paint job. Really neatly done. As I cleaned the bed ways with diesel fuel and rags, I found some of the original scraping is still there. I spent odd moments of the weekend cleaning the LeBlond lathe, freeing up some of the parts that were stuck from gummed oil and grunge, lubricating and generally getting to know the lathe. I mucked out the coolant tank, cleaned the chip pan, and found more odds and ends of small tools and toolbits in the accumulated swarf and old oil.
My buddy was making chips with the South Bend Lathe and the bandsaw yesterday (Sunday). I spent the day getting ready for Hurricane Sandy, getting groceries, gasoline cans filled for the welder, more diesel fuel for the tractor, and filling our water containers and Coleman lanterns. In between moving stuff around in the garage, I kept tinkering with the LeBlond lathe, mainly just cleaning. The next move for the LeBlond lathe is down into our basement, which will take some more old time rigging.
Yesterday, taking off the "pick off" gear cover (between the spindle stud gear and quick change box), I found a puzzler. The puzzler is on the "screw gear" (the biggest gear on the input to the quick change box), there are TWO different sizes of gear on the shaft. Only one is in mesh with an idler gear, the other is just there as a spacer or can be thrown into mesh by swapping it with the larger bull gear and adjusting the slotted link accordingly. In the cabinet base leg, I found a set of loose change gears, same face width and pitch as the pick off gears. I got a copy of "running the Regal", but no mention is made of transposing gears for cutting metric thread pitches. Could this be a set of extra loose change gears for metric threads ?