Dalton nine x four

Joe Michaels said:

Tool Guy:

Unless you find someone parting out a similar Dalton lathe, parts are unavailable. Replacement parts are often made of unobtainium for some of the less common old machine tools. As many of us have learned and have had to do, when we need parts for old machine tools, we "reverse engineer" them and make them ourselves. Something like the gear guard could be made by fabricating it from something like 1/8" steel plate and bar stock. If you are set up to cut and weld or braze steel a good replacement gear guard can be made "in house". Plenty of old machine tools never had gear guards, or had the gear guard castings smashed during moves. The result was shop-made gear guards, of a design based on what materials, shop equipment and skills were available. I've seen old machine tools with shop made gear guards made from galvanized sheet steel and light angle iron, assembled with round head machine screws (pre welding when those guards were made). I've seen some made by fabrication in shops where they were setup to really work sheet metal- having spot welders, brakes, etc. The main purpose of a gear guard is to keep anyone in close proximity of the gearing from being bitten by them. Whether a gear guard is a neat casting, or some boxy thing made out of sheet metal, its primary purpose is safety. I'd imagine the hinge bracket is on the Dalton lathe, and that is a starting point, as are the photos on Tony Griffiths' site.

If you have the skills and are setup to do it, fabricating gear guards from 1/8" thick steel plate and using welding or brazing to put the pieces together can result in a close facsimilie of the original guards. If you neatly weld or braze the corner seams and then slick them off with a flapper wheel on an angle grinder, and run an air needle scaler over the seams, you can replicate the appearance of a casting. Done it a few times when making replacement parts that I wanted to look like original castings. Blended the welds, and hit the parts with the air needle scaler to provide a surface like a casting. With a coat or two of sandable primer and then some enamel, the visual effect is quite close to original cast parts.

Again, the main purpose of gear guards is to keep people in close reach of the gearing safe and unbitten. Appearances of the guard are negligible when weighed against safety.

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