What's new
What's new

Finished my little turret lathe

jmp

Cast Iron
Joined
Nov 8, 2001
Location
Mechanicsville, Va
First a big thanks to all those that helped me gain some insight into geometric die heads which
will be a key piece of tooling for this lathe.
When I picked this machine up I had planned to just clean it up and use it. It came out of a school shop and was nasty. Underneath the layers of crud I found a machine that had nearly no wear. I took care of all the mechanical problems most of which had to do with the variable speed drive. The spindle and turret bores were indicated and all was well. Since tooling this thing up was going to take a little while I decided to go a little deeper into it and do a repaint while I had it diassembled. Not a top flight resto but at least a little better to look at. The bare metal surfaces were pretty heavily stained as the pics show. I resisted the temptation of the wire wheel and just cleaned them with solvent and soft scotchbright. I've finally accumulated just about enough tooling (thanks to ebay)to get started. Also, the turret and cross slide are made by Enco. Seems like just about every small turret lathe that doesn't have a proprietary turret has one of these enco jobs and they are stout!
Rockwell turret lathe
 
Mike- first class job! This should be posted in the "tool gloat" forum as I think you have a "find" there.

I like that turret head as well. I need to make one for my SB but that will have to come later.

Question; Why are the handles so long? I doubt you need the leverage and I'd find it hard to get close enough to my work to see what I feel I need to see.
Also, do you ever bump the drum switch with your knee and throw the spindle into reverse? Or, maybe I'm just clumsy?
-Jerald
 
Thanks guys. The handles do look a little long but make for a very smooth controllable feed due to the mechanical advantage gained. I do see some potential for the two spiders to interfere with each other if the slide and turret are close together. I can make up some shorter handles if needed. I wish it had a cross slide like the hardinge's with just one lever that moves perpendicular to the spindle. No prob hitting the drum switch so far. Did manage to carve a nice trench in the paint behind the turret when a tool holder was not positioned correctly :rolleyes:
 
Wow, so that's what they look like cleaned up and shiney! :D I've got one almost exactly like that, except not so pretty. Mine has the same turret, but I have the normal cross/top slide saddle and a tail stock. I thought about painting it, but wound up just cleaning it up and fixing the problems. I also found problems in the varispeed drive in that the jack shaft tying into the v-belts has shot bushings. Mine also has a broken casting for the rpm indicator drive, not worth fixing so I’ll probably adapt a digital tach. I also had to fix the back gear because the shift lever driven gear (that in turn drives the back gear eccentric) had fallen off. Only needed a snap ring. Sure am looking forward to making chips with my new lathe!

Thanks for the pics, very inspiring. I just don’t have the energy and drive to do a restoration myself. I also know myself in that if I did invest the effort to really clean and paint it like yours, I would loose a lot of the fun in worrying over every nick and scratch. :D
 
Even my 9yo son questioned the wisdom of painting it if it's just going to get scratched and dirty, but it won't take much effort to wipe it down and sweep out the chips. BadDog, you're really going to like that lathe. They are very well made. Nice wide ways and beefy head stock.
Good luck with it!
 








 
Back
Top