making some progress

still need to get the chuck back on.

Redrum, redrum, redrum...

its the last color before bare metal so i figured it was original color

A man's got every right to paint his stuff any color he wants. Machinery gray/green can get a bit old.

Nice job on the restoration. Just cleaning one of these old machines takes commitment.

Would like to see some better/bigger/closeup pics of this machine. The headstock looks Hendey but I am not familiar with all the asssembly to the left of it. The red will darken some with use.

yeah its a high speed no 1 I believe. here is the album so far.

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/members/todd77/albums/old-hendey/

not really a restoration just a clean up and paint.

Todd77 said:

its the last color before bare metal so i figured it was original color

Click to expand...

I wouldn't be too sure I am sure there are people more expert on the subject here who could chime in but I think the red may have simply been "red lead" which from what I understand was a lead tetraoxide which was used as a primer back in the day. Lead(II,IV) oxide - Wikipedia I almost wonder if the second to last color you saw when striping it would have been the one.

Anyone here know more about red lead? Have we found better primers than it these days or is that one of those cases of the new stuff is nowhere near as good as the old?

According to the Legend [AKA Hendeyman], the company painted the lathes any color the customer wanted other than grey. So red COULD have been correct.

I am working on 3 WW2 era machines, they all were painted "work force green" first, then gray either before or after delivery. That color appears to have been popular before the war.
Monarch offered custom paint at extra cost, I think many other makers did also.
Whatever color, its not easy painting a machine and have it look fairly good.
My cheap camera, does not make photos that small.

hi can you tell me what brand your lathe is ?it seems to be coming up pretty good.is it out of the forties??

adammil1 said:

I wouldn't be too sure I am sure there are people more expert on the subject here who could chime in but I think the red may have simply been "red lead" which from what I understand was a lead tetraoxide which was used as a primer back in the day. Lead(II,IV) oxide - Wikipedia I almost wonder if the second to last color you saw when striping it would have been the one.

Anyone here know more about red lead? Have we found better primers than it these days or is that one of those cases of the new stuff is nowhere near as good as the old?

Click to expand...

Can't claim any more "expertise" on it than being old enough to be more aware as to what "used to be", but red lead and white lead as primers were more for watercraft. Navy everywhere, blue-water and brown-water civil hulls, mostly.

The mainstay was red Iron Oxide for less corrosive "shore based" evironments, then zinc chromate, arcraft and industrial machinery as well. Lot of it depends on which metal is the base. Silica fillings are exactly that - filler/levelers, no help with corrosioan resistance. The pigment is an abrasive but about as inert otherwise as can be. Some other combinations just do NOT work well together - Aluminium is a highly variable metal to coat, from great results of those who bother ot get it right, to chronic frustration for those who do not. Other combinations are about as agnostic as ever were - CLEAN or appropriately prepared steel is one that will cooperate with damned near anything as a coating - and JFDI.

GE-lab-developed, later spun-off, "Red Glyptal" is an example of a "universal" coating. Sounds like an exotic lacquer but is not. An ignorant red iron oxide Alkyd at core, not an uncommon tribe atall. And yet? They "got the details very right" and it is good at many things. Unfortunately - selling cheaply is not on the list!



BTW.. Lead was expensive, actually, not cheap. What it did for the "premium" paints of the "leaded" era was make it easier to get a glossy-slick topcoat. Most of it that I ever used was spray-gun applied to cabinets made of wood for sound reduction but meant to look as if they were metal. As they did. Much less of it was "Dutch Boy" or PPG that was brush-applied to window shashes, casings, and sills for its durability as to temp swings, condensation, and rot coverage.

Big fuss over lead was whole-room residential, ceilings where it could get into foodstuffs as it degraded and particulates drifted down, or baby cribs where it could get gnawed-off and ingested.

Speaking of which, if you were an "expert" of that era? You also could calculate in your head how much Mercury bichloride - we all stashed some of it in with our terps and linseeds, etc - to tip-in for mold and mildew control, and boast what a good boy you were to go the extra mile for the best job! Nasty s**t, actually, but we knew it.

Lessons learnt, if any?

Humans have to take the leadership position as to poisoning ourselves or blowing ourselves up. Dogs cats, rats, birds, and bears simply cannot be bothered to put any effort into it.

I'm not joking. The uber-toxic Mercury compounds were over the counter, most any druggist as were powdered zinc and flowers of Sulfur. I must have been well past 30 years of age before it became even an extra paperwork form of annoyance to not be able to casually drop by the local hardware and pick up a few cases of commercial dynamite off the back of the "Blasters Permit" than many veterans were entitled to.

"Dangerous goods" were not considered so dangerous when more responsible humans yet walked. As turns out we were abysmally IGNORANT as to the carcinogens and other slow poisons.

But explosives?

When that evil fool blew-up the Oklahoma Federal Building and the news eventually said he had learnt about explosives in the military?

Those many among the general population quietly leading rather ORDINARY and law-abiding lives were glad he had probably failed the basic course, never knew it was ONLY the basic course.

What WE knew, if ever applied in anger, to-home, not on the field of battle in some lousy offshore war, could have made what HE did look like a mere touch-up painting job.