My home shop - for now.

Here are some photos of my temporary home shop. My job has required occasional relocations so I've had to balance tool acquisitions with the task of moving every few years. I will retire within a year and hope to make one last move and set up permanently (such as anything in this life is permanent....).


The Brown Derby was an unused small building behind the home I rent. It was originally built as a guest house and has two small rooms with a screened porch. For the last 15 years it has been used simply for household storage. It is about 55 years old, and although the flooring is adequate for my smaller machines, nothing is solid (or level). Fortunately, my lathe has an internal three point mounting system that accomodates floor flexing.

Screened porch
The screened porch provides a nice place to work - the mild winters in South Carolina enable work there most days year-round - although summer afternoons can be tough. The work bench would have gone inside but it wouldn't fit through the door. The small furnace is my most recently completed scratch-built project.

Hardinge TL
Hardinge TL 2
The shop centerpiece is a late model Hardinge TL which started productive life in the National Bureau of Standards lab. I reconditioned it several years ago. In the foreground is another TL undergoing reconditioning.

Lathe tooling cabinet
I recently completed a storage cabinet for collets and lathe tooling. I had sawn the trunk of a large white oak felled in my neighbors yard a number of years ago and this was an ideal use for the wood.

Schaublin 102 and cabinet
What started as a roll-around work bench and storage cabinet is now used to mount a 102 lathe. Both the lathe and drive assembly run smoothly enough that I have not blemished the table top by fastening them down.

Fixture table
An extra milling machine table provides a nice fixturing table and expedient surface plate for non-precision layout work.

Workbench
Workbench and mill
I built this workbench before my interests shifted to metalworking but it is still handy.

Casting patterns
A set of patterns ready for mounting to a match board. Will be a Kurt style milling vise sized to fit my Hardinge UM. Although they are all flat back and the local foundry could easily handle them loose, by mounting them to a match board and fitting runners, the casting cost is greatly reduced since one mold makes four parts instead of just one when handling loose patterns.

As my wife frequently notes, I seldom do anything "productive" in my shop. It is therapy for me and an outlet for mechanical problem solving. So far, I've reconditioned the machines shown here and several others, which will comprise the base for a part time machine shop after retirement. My projects have been oriented toward developing future capabilities, including making tooling for the machinery and developing some small ability to heat treat. At another location I have in storage a few more machines and a fairly complete woodworking shop.

Regards,
Jim Schwitters

Your workshop looks excellent, very un-stressful and uncluttered.

J Grainger

Wow! That's a nice compact shop. It looks like a perfect sized work space for the type of work you are doing. May I ask what line of work you do for a living? With two Hardinge lathe, and a Schaublin you have some serious precision lathes. I like the small milling machine. Do you need a rotary table with indexing plate? The most important thing for your shop would probably be air conditioning. I have a time share property in Hilton Head SC, and air conditioning is a must.

Cool shop Jim....love the wood floors!

very nice

"As my wife frequently notes, I seldom do anything "productive" in my shop. It is therapy for me and an outlet for mechanical problem solving. "

Brother!! I have found you!!

Your sentiment is acutely felt. I showed your post to mine, she stuck her nose up and said yeah wives should get togeather. Fat chance of that, I'll delete my internet history after this to make sure.

Very nice flloors and wood/metal combinations, calming and attractive for sure.

Very nice. I like the colourcombination of oak and grey.
I also have a therapeutic shop (maybe we can make some spare cash from renting it to a shrink as practising room) but I'm still in the stadium of cabinet making.
About the oven. What material did you use for the lining and how thick is it ?
Is it an electrical furnace ?
Arjan

Arjan,
The furnace is lined with two layers of insulating material. The inner layer is 2 1/2" thick insulating fireblock rated at 1250 degrees C. Outside that is 2" of stiff insulating batt, I'm not sure of the composition but it seems like compressed glass wool.

It is electric, 120V. Chamber is about 8" x 8" x 10".

Here is is at 1000 degrees C. Warning: large picture. Furnace at temperature

Regards,
Jim

Wow Jim I am totally in awe.

I think you have the 'feng shui' of machining
completely under control here. I got a big dose
of relaxing calm just *looking* at the photos.

I suspect the incomplete TL was very happy to
be installed next to the restored one, so it can
look over and see what's to become of it.

And inspecting the wood tooling cabinets make
me wish I had somehow picked up the 'woodworker
gene' along the way.

Terrific setup you have there, I really
appreciated the pictures after a stressful week
at work.

Jim

Oh, btw, what's in the *second* room?

Jim

Jim,
Thanks for the comments. I'm about to go out to the shop this morning and relax from a stressful week.

The second room is simply storage of tooling, various projects in work and all the oddments associated with a shop. It is very handy because I don't need to heat or cool it, allowing for a small window AC and elect space heater in the shop room. Works here in South Carolina anyway, our winters being so much milder than yours..... So far, zero problems with condensation and rust in the spare room.

I do have another larger building out back that I have used mostly for a paint shop and recently finished assembling a UM. Hardinge UM

I assembled it there because it is at ground level and will be much easier to move when the time comes. Thanks again for sending me the Hardinge wiring diagrams.

Jim

Jim,
Maybe a stupid question but I was looking at the compound on the restored TL and there is an extra lever what exactly does that do. by the way wonderful looking workspace =-)

If it's the one I'm thinking of (not really
visible in the shop photos) then it's for
rapid retract of the compound when cutting
threads, at the end of each pass. The HLVH
has that sort of lever as well.

Jim (R, not S)

Jeep,
Jim R. is exactly correct about the top slide quick retract mechanism. Below are two better pictures. A quick flip of the lever to the left and it withdraws the top slide .100". It has excellent repeatability and is wonderful for threading. Hardinge revised this design for the HLV model and again for the HLV-H but the function is just the same.
TL top slide 1

TL top slide 2

Regards,
Jim

Jim-

It is great to see your shop & it does look very relaxing. That first TL is the one that ruined many of us for any lesser refurbishment. It was the lead photo on the Hardinge lathe site for a long time. Now, the rest of us who've seen it can't just slap one together and use it; there are standards out there to be met! Great tool chests, and I like the workbench, too. I do a lot of hand woodwork, and still never made or acquired a good bench.

I once asked my wife if she minded terribly when i got into a scraping phase. Surprisingly, she immediately said, no. In her observation it was the way I got in touch with my spiritual self. Not sure I'd have termed it quite like that, but perceptive support from ones SO is always appreciated.

Thanks for being the resource you've been to many of us who are working on these lathes. Both of mine are in limbo. Whenever my "real" work slows down, i only have to start working on a machine, or on the house, and the dry spell comes to an end ....and the projects go into limbo

Great to hear you will be able to retire soon!

smt

Stephen,
That workbench was my first serious woodworking project....back in 1984. I had done a bit of work at the base craft shop but that kept me away from home too much so I decided to make a bench since I had nothing on which to do handwork at our rental house.

I patterned it loosely after a design Tage Frid published in an issue of FWW from the early 80s. It's ostensibly European style but I made a number of modifications to suit what I thought my requirements would be. The major difference is that the tail vise has a steel box rail for a slide so I don't have to worry about it loosening or sticking with moisture changes, plus I can clamp pretty tightly if needed without stress on wooden rails.

I mostly do general metal shop work on it now but occasionally it gets used for its original purpose. When settled, I'll build in a good fixed shop bench and rededicate this to the woodworking section. I'll hand plane the top, scrape it a bit and it will be as good as new. The beech top makes a very nice work surface....I've got a few hundred more bdf of 8/4 that's been air drying for about 15 years so it should be ready when I'm in the bench building mood.

As for the TL, it would not be nearly as good looking as it is now were it not for the care with which it had been used by the previous owner. I got it from DRMO (the oft maligned GovLiquidations) near Baltimore and it has a brass inventory tag from the US Bureau of Standards. It came with what I believe to be the original 3 and 4 jaw chucks along with steady and a few other accessories, all marked with a common inventory number via engraving pen. So, occasionally, gov't surplus stuff is not separated or mistreated.

It appeared to have been used carefully....no evidence of major crashes or abuse, with one major exception. It appears have been dropped over on its front. There was actually surprisingly little damage, which consisted of one corner of the chip tray bent, the cross slide handle bent badly, outer end of cross slide screw bent slightly and the bolts which afix the bed to the pedestal from underneath bent and banged up. The only part that required much work was the cross slide screw and I only a few weeks ago got around to fixing it properly. I had straightened it as well as I could and it worked fine but the slight wobble of the handle bugged me. By silver brazing a new stem on the lead screw, I was able to retain the original gear and threaded portion which are still in fine shape. Below are two photos from the auction listing:
Auction photo 1 Auction photo 2

If there was a silver lining in the lathe's condition, it was that it appears to have sat unused for many years. Virtually all the ball bearings, less the spindle, had dried grease in them and most of the sliding parts were very sticky from congealed lubricant. It all cleaned up very well and all that's left to make it like new is to scrape in the bed ways to the carriage to prevent binding on the ends. Surprisingly, the tailstock has a degree or so of slop on the split bed. Previous users must have slid the tailstock frequently. When I'm ready to get in touch with my inner self, I'll tackle that scraping job.

Regards,

Jim

Jim,
I currently have a Atlas 12 X 36 Cabiett model and I have been Chasing after a bit more substancial Clausing Model 6300 series 12 X 36 lathe. the clausing has the Tiny graduated dials for the cross feed and the compound. I plan to upgrade the dials and have been looking at the George H thomas books which include's details for building a retractible compound for threading. I was wondering If it might be possible to copy the hardinge design and fit it to the clausing.
Thanks
archie =) =) =)

Jeep,
Not being familiar with the Clausing top slide design, I cannot comment on the ease of adapting the Hardinge quick retract design to it.

The quick retract variant on the TL is simple in concept but not exactly easy to make. I suspect later variants were made to ease manufacture rather than because they functioned better since the TL design works very nicely and I have difficulty imagining it wearing out in normal use.

Although it might be difficult to figure out, below are a few disassembly pictures I had in my files. The critical element is a large diameter course square thread that is affixed to the leadscrew carrier. I seem to recall that it is a double start thread to give it the desired axial travel distance over the short handle throw. Those threads are partially visible in the second and third photos.

TL top slide 1 TL top slide 2 TL top slide 3

I can send high resolution photos by email if desired.

Jim