Help with Hendey Steady Rest.

Hello all. I've got a really nice 50's era hendey 12 speed 12x30 that i picked up a couple years ago from DRMO. one thing i am missing is a steady rest. I have struck out finding one for sale. I am currently deployed overseas in Bahrain and have access to a milling machine, tig welders and cnc plasma. I'm thinking i may be able to just build one myself. would anyone be able to help me with some drawings, or measurements, i have about 11 months left here to get it done.

Darrell

measurements

Click to expand...

Well, since the lathe's actual swing is 14 1/2", the center height (from flat way) will be about 7 or 7 1/4

Private message an email address (with HENDEY SR in subject line) and I'll send a scan of what they look like from Bulletin 2220 L-A-4

ON EDIT:

Add scan from June 1938

Some more info on the lathe it's a 12x30 12 speed and has an SN of 37521H272, my guess is that it's a 1950's to 52 vintage. I got it from DRMO and it has an airforce property tag. It appears to have been used very little. I've got it running on a VFD, and wired the origingal pushbutton switches to control it. It has a D1-6 spindle and i still need to souce a 4 jaw chuck. a lot of what i want to machine will require a steady rest.

Darrell

Hi Darrell,

I've got a beatiful old hendey 14 x 8 from 1921 with the original steady rest. I also have an old 14 x 30 Reed Prentice with no steady rest. The hendey steady will not fit the RP so my plan is to fabricate a steady fron some 1 1/4" plate. I've got a dimensioned sketch for use on a burn table for the rough cutout. my dimensions reflect the addition of about 1/16" of material to all surfaces to be cut to give me some material to remove below the hardened surface from the burn table. I derived all these dimensions from the hendey steady rest. If your hendey is 14 1/2 swing i would think this sketch would work fine for you. Just raise the center point about 1/4 inch from the dimensions i developed. You will of course need to machine the bottom plate to fit the ways on your particular machine. If you send me your email address in a PM, i'll email you a pdf file.

Mark