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Questions about getting a larger lathe than I originally wanted and an intro...

Kevin T

Stainless
Joined
Jan 26, 2019
Aloha, I am a tinkerer and metal worker with a little experience using lathes. I am getting older but still find that I like to spend time in the garage being useful, or maybe out of the way, with metal working. I have had a small table top lathe for many years but always wanted a real tool that I could also use for steel or bigger jobs! My Micro Mark was useful for small teflon/delrin bushings and soft metals but over the years I used it less and less because of it's limitations.

Fast forward to today and I find that I have a chance to pick up a South Bend lathe for a super good price and I am very tempted. Its a big old beast I am still trying to learn exactly what it is but I think it is a 1940's era maybe a 16". I measured quickly with my hands from chuck center to ways and I think it was about 8". It has a very long bed and hence my trepidation at going for it without thinking this through a bit. I think the bed is at least 6 feet long! The foot print of the base to far end on the the floor is 8 feet. I have the room but I am having trouble figuring if I would ever use all that bed!

Have any of you guys that got a longer lathe regretted it later? I sort of have an idea in my mind that I could utilize the far end of it for other uses but I am still looking for other guys that have gone before me. I was thinking to fashion maybe a mag drill portable drill press to it so that I have a home made drill press way over there at the far end or a home made drill press that I design to create some multi functionality. Has anyone built a hybrid bridgeport type mill at one end of a long lathe?

Re the mag drill, I am not sure if magnetic connection to the lathe is a smart idea either but just thinking and looking for some guidance from this place. I have been poking around for a few days on here and I am sure with the quality of the info and the amount of traffic there has got to be some wisdom for me to make a smart choice.

If this is the wrong place for this post please let me know where I should start. I thought about posting in the South Bend Forum but I wanted to address the issues of longer bed that I may never use and how I could turn that into a WIN for me first. Where I am there are not a ton of choices for machine tools and so often there are trade offs given our remote location.

Thanks for any useful feedback and what a nice place you guys have here. Cheers and Aloha, Kevin
 
Based on the limited information on your needs/wants, the size of the lathe, condition of and tooling, I would say it is too big. If you have been getting by with a 7" lathe, I would say a 10" or 12" would be in line with your needs. The bigger the lathe, the slower it runs. I have a 10" SB and a Monarch 12CK which is a 14". The top speed of the monarch is ~640 rpm with is too slow for anything less than 1". Its too big and slow for collet work. All that is done on the 10".

If you can have only one machine I would choose a 12".

Tom
 
I don't think anybody ever regrets getting a larger lathe than they originally intended. You don't have to use the extra length if you never need it, but you CAN'T use extra length that you don't have. As far as other considerations, your work will dictate the swing that makes more sense for you. If you do mainly tiny diameter stuff you would ideally want something with some decent RPM. I ran a 16" CK Monarch for years and we had upped the RPM to 1,000 but it was still way too slow for smaller diameter stuff with carbide. Since most of our work was pretty big stuff it was no big deal, just left a little polishing stock on small diameter work. However, if all my work was little, I'd not want the hassle of having to polish everything.
 
I will add something a lathe made in the 1940's there is a fair chance the bed is worn and the lathe may need refurbishment.where can you get that done over there would be the question. It may only be worth scrap value.

If you had to have something good look at importing something good obviously don't waste your time importing old stuff.
Have a look here and see what you think of these lathes and ask for prices, work out import costs and resale value if you ever want to sell it, if you say there is a demand for good lathes.

look at these Whacheon U.S.A., Inc. - Commercial Lathes - Used Lathe Equipment & Parts - www.whacheon.com

Precision High-Speed, Heavy Duty Lathes & Vertical Miles, Educational Lathes | LeBlond Ltd.


Get it with all the fruit i.e. steadys, 3 and 4 jaw set of change gears for metric / imperial. digital readout.
It will be ahead of a old lathe and easier to get sizes / finishes correct.
if you can trial the lathe at the dealers shop so you can see for yourself before you buy
 
Welcome, and Aloha from New York City!

If you have the room, and it’s in decent shape, by all means, grab it.

Don’t hesitate on account of it being “too long”. At 6’ it’s just a medium size lathe. please Resist the idea of putting anything on the bed, that’s not a lot of real estate down there, keep it useful. If you aren’t turning something long, say you are facing a part, it sure is nice to have the room to slide the tailstock out of the way, and be able to leave a drill and/or a chuck in it too.

Think of it this way, you can get a smaller lathe any time, they are not rare, and are much more easily shipped.
 
They made them much longer - like 12 feet. What you are considering could be much older than this early forties pub. Kind of depends on whether it is sugar or military related. As can readily be seen, the 16 has got some weight to it

You can nail size if the various riveted on tags are intact

Thanks to Mr. Wells for the scan

http://www.wswells.com/data/catalog/100B/cat_100B.pdf

Here is a sugar industry cast off - maybe from some long ago scrap drive - somewhere in those islands.

They were making them look like this as of the 1916 catalog at Lodge & Shipley. A 27", so over a ton on that pallet
 

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Welcome Kevin,
Nice introduction and first post. Two things caught my attention, you are in Hawaii and it's priced very reasonable. If the lathe is not total junk i would buy it. I suspect you are on a budget and lathes of any type are hard to come by locally. After having bit the Bullet and bought an older long lathe myself i have no regrets. It did take up a lot of room and i had to add on a bit to accommodate. Good luck Hodge
 
I think a 16" lathe is a good size for a general shop lathe. If you don't need the extra length but have the space make a wooden cover for the end you don't use and you can use it to store tools/workbench. I think you will enjoy the step up in size, once you have a machine like that all kinds of uses start popping up.

Like everyone else said give it a check over. Run it through speeds and feeds.
 
Based on the limited information on your needs/wants, the size of the lathe, condition of and tooling, I would say it is too big. If you have been getting by with a 7" lathe, I would say a 10" or 12" would be in line with your needs. The bigger the lathe, the slower it runs. I have a 10" SB and a Monarch 12CK which is a 14". The top speed of the monarch is ~640 rpm with is too slow for anything less than 1". Its too big and slow for collet work. All that is done on the 10".

If you can have only one machine I would choose a 12".

Tom

I would go with Tom on this one. I have a 13" Sheldon (purchased from Tom) and a 10" Seneca Falls. The 13" lathe has a 56" bed and seems to be just about perfect. The top speed on this machine is 2,000 rpm. The Seneca Falls machine has a 60" bed with a maximum speed of 560 rpm. While I wouldn't mind a 72" bed on either of them the smaller throw isn't a problem.

As a side note a friend of mine runs a commercial shop. For years he had a 13" and a 16" LeBlond along with a Bardons and Oliver turret lathe. Both the 16" LeBlond and the Bardons sat almost unused for the last 5 years. They did get occasional use, but the 13" LeBlond got 95+% of the work. Last year he finally parted with both the larger LeBlond and the Bardons.

The 13" size is much easier to work around, and can handle anything within reason.


As for mounting a mag drill to the bed, I would think it would be a bad idea. The last thing you want to do is magnetize the bed. Every bit of steel or other ferrous metal swarf will stick to it and become an abrasive.
 
The ideal size is a 13x40, fully tooled with TA and metric change gears. It is the optimum size for the home shop. Do not accept any lathe that does not spin less than 50 rpm or slower or does not spin to 2000 rpm or higher. Normally these machines have at least 12 spindle speeds.
 
You can buy a decent drill press for the price of a used mag drill. If you HAVE to use the end of the lathe for something, I think a wood cover is the way to go.

You've said you want to upgrade from a tiny lathe to better handle steel, not for the greater swing or bed length, so I'd be hesitant to get a 16" for your home shop. Not only is maximum spindle speed going to be very slow, but the chucks that come with it may not close down to the size of your work.

You're the best judge of the work you will be doing, so trust your gut on whether that extra capacity will be a help or a hindrance.
 
Thanks guys for all the consideration. It never occurred to me that the bigger machines may have fewer useful speeds for my skill set. I am prone to chucking up parts that need polishing and do use higher speeds for that, or for smaller diameters! Definately need to get up to speed on the specs of this machine first. I had forgotten about the sugar and farming out here and assumed it was a military unit. I have been around machine shops in the past and it "looks" well preserved and has a crate of accessories and bits and cutting tools with it. It was owned/used sparingly by a guy who I believe had it since the late 70's. He could run me through it's functions but I get the feeling he might not know the specs of it or it's ranges.

Out here this stuff is very rare and bringing things out here is always cost prohibitive. I am having a hard time even finding anyone to move it to a new home but have a few irons in the fire to try to understand the cost for that. Anyway thanks for the feedback and welcome. Anything else comes to mind I appreciate the dialog!
 
Reading comprehension guys, here is a quote from his last paragraph: "Where I am there are not a ton of choices for machine tools and so often there are trade offs given our remote location." Hence my reasoning for considering the older Southbend. Hodge
 
If you have room for it, at all, grab it. That's a good medium sized lathe and as you say, rare as hen's teeth in Hawaii. Yes, the big old lathes have slow spindle speeds, so you use HSS cutters instead of carbide. Speed is really primarily a productivity. For your uses a low speed spindle will not be an issue, especially on large diameter work that you will inevitably come across once you have a bigger lathe. The gains in power for material removal and rigidity over a tiny toy of a lathe will certainly be useful to you.

I say this as the owner of an 18"x6ft L&S built in 1918. I thought I had lost my mind when I bought it, but after a few quick jobs for other folks that paid for it in full, I kinda changed my mind.
 
Follow up question, what is a super good price? $500, $1500....? Amount of "goodies" that go with it. That could be worth $1000 or more. Room for more than one full size lathe? Get this one and find out what you don't like about it, then add or sell this for what you really need.

Tom
 
Thanks for the pdf johnoder! I have been poking around on the vintagemachinery.org website and figure I already owe that guy a few donation bucks if I get the thing. Looking at the catalog you provided I think this unit is a 16" Toolroom lathe 8117-C. I dont have a full inventory of the accessories but it does have 3 and 4 jaw chuck, center rest and collet rack. I didnt see collets but they may be in the crate! I am going to have the guy demo it for me and try to learn how to do a couple quick checks to see how worn it is. Are there any quick reference places or links that can help me determine if its in bad shape?

Also... Looks like it has a 21-725 RPM range.

For you guys that mentioned this could be an issue, how small of a diameter of rod stock would you work with if you had such a machine? I guess I could clamp my Micro Mark to the far end of the thing to turn small stuff but it's really not a very precise tool. I could never get a decent thread made with it.
 
Follow up question, what is a super good price? $500, $1500....? Amount of "goodies" that go with it. That could be worth $1000 or more. Room for more than one full size lathe? Get this one and find out what you don't like about it, then add or sell this for what you really need.

Tom

600 !!! Its a cant afford not to buy it kind of price for this rock!

EDIT, I would not consider buying to resell. That is a tough road to slog, shipping is so expensive for heavy items it can be hard to find buyers that understand.
 
Note that it will be too slow to use carbide or a QCTP. Just use a lantern tool post and HSS bits. Easy and cheap on ebay. I notice many USA sellers will not ship to Hawaii or Alaska for some crazy reason. Guess they never heard of priority mail.
Bill D
 








 
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