Logan 200 & 820 Lathe Restorations

So, intro: Our Logan 820 came into our shop when we purchased the Campbell Bosworth machinery co. in 1999. It was in an abusive shop and sat mostly in storage for the last decade. Lots of wear but complete. It's 110 volt but the step pullys on the motor side were replaced with a single v-belt line. I have a motor step pully now but will be looking for the jack-shaft flywheel. I'm putting most of my time into this unit right now. I've got the apron totally redone. Totally slick! I tore down the quick-change gearbox tonight and plan to get it painted tomarrow.


Our Logan 200 came when we purchased the Randall machinery co. in 2006. Also an abusive shop. Lots of wear as well but in different places. Didn't get any change gears. We'll find some eventually but in the mean time we won't have much use for them. When we got this lathe it had this idiot motor set up. The belt guard cover was gone and they had this overkill variable speed motor sitting on an independent stand to the left of the belt guard with barstock linking the two together. I've since gotten a 3phase motor mounted on the original bracket and a replacement door installed. After a new flat belt and LOTS of cleaning and oiling, the spindle spins great with no obvious run-out. I put it to the RPM gun today and got a total of 12 speeds ranging from 1470 rpm to 34 rpm (gotta love original set-ups). I've got all the grit and swarf stripped down to the original paint and everythings runs clean. The apron will need a rebuild (new half-nuts and the two 90 degree gears will be ordered someday). I've got this lathe put together and running for the time being but it'll get tore down and repainted eventually. One area of concern is the carrages top 'H' casting. Bad wear where it rides on the rails. I know, I know! "It's probably your bed that's wore," No. I've seen the gouges with my own eyes. They make the cairage drop bad enough that it binds against the lead-screw when you slid it to the far right, even when I take off the plates that pull it against the bed.

I'm restoring these two lathes in my afterhours freetime. They're being tooled as a pair and have found a section of concrete to call home (hopefully permanently). These two machines will probably be set up strictly for wood, rubber, and poly turning applications. Simple stuff. I'm working on getting splash panels on the back the two lathes. I also swiped a 3c collet systum from one of our southbends (still in storage) for the 820. I don't plan on using any kind of coolant on these but I will be setting them up with a vacume. One part we make will definantly need it. It's a rubber disk we grind a concave surface into with a carbide tip grinder and it throws stuff everyware.

Pics soon!

First question: Concering the 820's quick change box,

How much play is acceptable in the gear change levers where they ride on their shaft? The shaft seems to have most of the wear but there feels like a 64th to a 32nd of play in both. The lever castings could be wore too but don't have bronze bushings. replacing the shaft will probably do the trick but before I start tooling up to cut a keyway, is it a big deal?

Scott Logan (who posts on here sometimes) would be the authority, but I don't think that slop in those shift levers is a big deal. The levers on my Logan 1940 have a lot of slop too, when moving them around. But when the levers are latched into position, the gears seem to be engaged well.

I don't think much of the fancy "drive box" Logan used..... Fiddly, hard to get to when you want to change speeds, but, of course, super-safe.

The oe I use has an S-B countershaft, and it is 100% handier to deal with. At least as long as OSHA stays away.

The 200 sounds pretty worn out, but it is possible to get a lot of wear on the H carriage casting before much happens to the ways. The 200, at least with a long bed, is very flexible; if some idiot puts it on the floor without leveling, the twist can be bad enough to severely wear the carriage at opposite corners. IMO, you need to do a lot of measuring, then maybe some machining to accept epoxied wear plates at the back, and build up with something like Moglice on the front. Or, maybe get a replacement on eBay- they're fairly common if you wait long enough.

Conrad Hoffman said:

The 200 sounds pretty worn out, but it is possible to get a lot of wear on the H carriage casting before much happens to the ways. The 200, at least with a long bed, is very flexible; if some idiot puts it on the floor without leveling, the twist can be bad enough to severely wear the carriage at opposite corners. IMO, you need to do a lot of measuring, then maybe some machining to accept epoxied wear plates at the back, and build up with something like Moglice on the front. Or, maybe get a replacement on eBay- they're fairly common if you wait long enough.

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I found one replacement on yahoo for $60. I've just got to convince the boss.

The two together.


The 200. This is after it got cleaned and set up properly. I wish I had pics of how it started.


The 820. You can see it's in the middle of the process at the moment.

The 820's apron assembly (don't mind the oil smudges). After about 8 bushings, paint, 2 new (non factory) oil cups, and some rtv silicone, It's tight and sealed. A couple gear shafts had some considerable wear but the bushings were a little oversized when I pressed them in so without reaming them to actual size, they compensated. Someday I may need to replace the two shafts but they're good for now.

The gear change levers:

After measuring everrything I found that even though it looks bad, the shaft is only .005 wore. The levers have most of the wear. I've desided I'll go ahead and bore them out and bush' them. The large diameter gears need it pretty bad too. Luckely all I'll have to do with them is press new bushings in.

I have a spare apron for parts off a Logan 1825--looks the same as yours. Bought mine to replace the worm drive --the rest looks pretty good. Let me know if you need any bits off it--I'll do you a very reasonable deal.

Sea Farmer said:

I have a spare apron for parts off a Logan 1825--looks the same as yours. Bought mine to replace the worm drive --the rest looks pretty good. Let me know if you need any bits off it--I'll do you a very reasonable deal.

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The only two pieces I'd like to replace eventually are the axle for the handwheel and the gear shaft directly above it. You can see the end of it through the casting in the picture. They're pretty wore but like I said, the bushings compensated. How much would you want for those though? They'd be good to keep in the toolbox.
Before I rebuilt the apron, the handcrank was a little scary to use. The gears all meshed but the shafts floped all over the place.

Concerning the 200's worn H casting: I like the idea of epoxying in some pieces to build it back up. I'm wondering though how stable they'll be if I then mount the piece on a surface grinder to get them to specs? Would silver solder be a better aproach? Or mabey just tap in some countersunk screws to hold in some brass gibs (replaceable when they wear out again in 50 years!)

Been awhile and I've been scatterd between jobs and projects but there have been some new developments. First off: with our ever changing shop floor-plan, I talked the boss out of these two machines. They wouldn't do all of our plastic work due to size and ruggedness so we'll push it all to a machine that can. These'll be the start of my own home shop. Hope noone mines if I continue the restoration report even though these'll be hobby machines.

I tore down the 820 to it's major components and have the bed, legs, and pan in the process of getting cleaned, and repainted. The pan had a number of holes from old coolant systums and splash aprons but they've been brazed up. It looks like it was lifted and moved around by the pan a few times but with a clear section of concrete floor and a stout rubber mallet, It's flat now. There were two washers shimming up the rear right edge of the bed between the bed and the pan. I'm going to asemble it without them and level the legs acordingly. More pics soon.

Holes brazed up from an old coolant systum.

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A factory blooper! Offset hole in one legs foot. Not a big deal and I left it alone as it adds to the machines character I think. It won't stop the machine from being bolted down to a skid if needs be. One of my first projects (when the lathe is up and running) is going to be to make a set of leveling screws for this machine.

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Wear in cairage top casting. It's a little more obvious in the picture of the back flat-way. There's an intentional smudge on the back side of the front V-way showing how the sharp edge of the worn V scraped dust off my fingertip. Dunno any better visual's, sorry.

I think I'm going to go with the brass-gib with countersunk screw remedy for this.... but not now. The 820 isn't as bad as he 200 but both will need to be addressed eventually.

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The gibbs for the crossfeed and compound were pretty uneven an gouged up so cleaned up the operating side on the surface grinder. Turned out to be an easy save. There's still one vissible low spot on the corner of one but it shouldn't matter.

Well, both lathes are at home in my garage now. I've sandblasted, polished, and painted everything for the 820. I need to order a few things from Logan Actuator and I might take a stab at scraping the bed before I remount the headstock and cairage. I did find an original step flywheel and the quick change levers 'bushed' rather well. I'm going to order a new shaft for them and they'll be perfect! For anyone who desides to bore out and bush their levers, I found that leaving in the idler gear helped support the fork in the casting and clamping the casting in a vise on either side of the holes being bored (with the rest of the lever sticking out in the open) gave it sufficient support. I need to do the same procedure on two more locations and all the castings holes will be to specs. These are the pivot hole in the lead screw engagement lever and the hole in the gearbox that the leadscrew exits from.

I'm still keeping the 200 in one piece for now. I leveled the two lathes with sheet metal squares for the time being and I'm making the levelers on the 200 as a late night bordom killer. There are two critical issues I've noticed in the 200. One is that the half nut are shot.... they work 75% of the time so long as I keep the lever pressed down. New nut's will fix that of course. The other is that I'm getting alot of chatter on heavyer cuts. And by heavy I mean anything over .0010 on cold-roll at any speed. Is this really 'heavy' for this lathe or is it just a compoundment to the wear in the cairrage and my use an old lantern style tool post? It kinda mellows out if I put my weight on the front side of the saddle which Is why I'm inclined to blaim the wear.

Progress on the 820

200's in place and cutting chips.

So first let me apologize for the crudity of this.... "cad" drawing..... I'm sill uploading software back to my laptop since it's recent crash/wipe.

This is a basic concept of how I plan to fix the wear under the saddle's casting on both lathes. I recently aquired a production cross-slide for the 200 which came with an extra saddle casting. So, between the three casting's, I'm going to take the worst (to start with) and mill out about a 3/4" by 3/8" channel on the front and back surfaces that touch the ways. I'll drill countersunk screw holes on the top side and fill the channels with brass flat stock. The front side will of course have a v-way milled into it and both 'gibs' will be attached by two screws each. As they wear, I can put shim stock between the casting and the gib till they just need to be replaced.

This should work right? Honesty, If anyone can think of any reason this wouldn't work, pipe up! I don't want to blow a casting on a whim. I'm wondering if the brass might wear too quickly? To be honest though, I'd rather change out gibs every decade of so than wear out the bed. Will brass gibs give enough support to the saddle?

I do realize I'm trying to save a machine that probably should have gone to the scrapper, but it's a learning experience. Everything wrong with these machines so far has been able to be fixed rather easily. Aside from scraping the ways, this would be the next critical issue to tackle. I imagine the same concept could be applied to the tailstock as well.