Regal 14"

Hello Fellas,
First post here.
I tried to make a post yesterday but it disappeared into the ether.
I brought home the proverbial "pig in a poke" yesterday.
This old lathe was crammed into a storage garage with the front side to the wall and stuff piled above and around it so I couldn't look it over. The father was selling his deceased son's things and knew nothing about it.
Made the deal a week ago and when I go to pick it up it's pretty obvious the lathe has been tipped over some time in its recent past. Broke the hand wheel on the carriage, the handles on the crossfeed and compound and busted the on/off/forward/reverse switch off.
You can imagine my heart sinking when I went to pick it up and saw all that damage.
But... I had agreed to buy it and felt bad for the guy who lost his son (2 bullet holes in the back) and so I gritted my teeth, girded my loins and went ahead with the deal. I've whizzed away $400 on whisky and women before and didn't get so much as 10 lbs of scrap iron then. Here I got about 800 lbs.
I need some advice tho.
If it tipped over does that automatically make it scrap? Where could I find someone to look it over, evaluate it for me and tell me what to do with it? Am in the Twin Cities MN and could haul it somewhere - it's still on my trailer.
I'm pretty handy - restore old tractors, can weld and braze here at home. Was a fledgling machinist in the Navy for 4 years - about 45 years ago now but never followed the trade. Could still single point a set of threads tho. If I had a lathe.
I didn't expect this thing to be a turn-key deal by any means but I don't need a big restoration project either.
Where do I go from here?
Thank you.
Jerry
PS, I could get some photos for you later.

Thanks Thermite,
Guess I'm starting out on the wrong foot?
LeBlond made the Regal?
Should I repost that on the LeBlond board?

You'll probably be able to get more help on the heavy iron forum.

Cal

There are all sorts of REGAL LeBlonds - having first appeared in late twenties / early thirties

Maybe yours looks like these

R. K. LeBlond Machine Tool Co. - Publication Reprints | VintageMachinery.org

Check out the pair of pubs near the bottom Running a Regal part 1 and part 2

Hi Jerry, welcome to practical machinist! As to whether the machine is scrap due to having tipped over, there's no better way to find out than to cut a part. Use a piece of steel, 1018 or whatever you have. Maybe a short piece 2" diameter by 6" long (give or take), and make a few cuts. Next, take your micrometer and measure the results to see if it held consistently down the length. You'll need a good straight edge to see wear in the ways. Also, maybe get an idea of bearing condition by taking a heavy cut of the bar (one that's making long blue-colored spirals) and eyeball the resulting finish. Note; even if it's not perfect, this isn't the end of the world. Why not? Simple, it's because a) you got it cheaply, and b) it may be just fine for your purposes (after all, for playing around making bushings, standoffs, spacers, or what not, it may be perfectly fine for your needs), and c) it may not be damaged at all. Thus, take heart and don't give in to your fears because lots of lathes have been rolled onto their sides. Yours isn't the first and won't be the last! Me? I'm thinking cosmetic damage. And if you have the broken bits, try your hand at making repairs by brazing them back into place. What have you got to lose? Anyway, good luck.

Dito that... You may be surprised how rugged your machine is. A kid I worked with managed to drop a Bridgeport Mill on its side. We thought for sure it was going to the scrap heap. After a little clean up and fixin of the busted stuff, it went right back into full use. No issues. Don

Before you try to run the lathe and cut any metal, you asked how to evaluate the lathe and damage.

A lathe doing a 'face-plant' on the knobs, wheels and controls on the apron and headstock can cause obvious up-front damage only. BUT the impact onto a hard surface varies a LOT..

Simple example: The carriage travel wheel. Usually has three or four spokes. the outer rim and a swivel handle protruding from the outer rim. The first part to impact the concrete or asphalt driveway or floor will be the swivel handle. So it pushes back on the rim, until the rim breaks, then the rest of the rim will next hit the concrete. The rest of the rim is broken off, usually at where the spokes attach to the center hub of the wheel. This hub is almost always keyed onto the shaft that goes into the apron, there will be a bearing in the front wall of the apron, then inside the apron it has a gear on it to move the apron left and right on the lathe's bed-ways. This shaft goes through the apron and has a bearing in the back wall of the apron as well.

So: here is where you find out if the impact has usually ruined the lathe; If the two bearings are still properly in the apron walls, there are no cracks where the shaft took so much force on impact that it shoved the bearings through the apron, breaking the aron walls or bending the shaft, breaking the gears etc..

A similar big problem with the precision feed knob to run the cross-slide in and out.. the casting the feed is bolted to can be cracked..

Any of these parts that are cracked or obviously distorted by the impact. pretty much take the lathe off the 'restorable' list, unless a good 'parts' lathe can be found to donate the needed parts..

This is not to say that anything is not repairable. I'm sure that cracked bearing seats that were pushed out of the back of the apron can be pressed or pulled back into nearly perfect alignment and then the cracks brazed, the repair checked for being straight and correct or not. ETC ETC.. BUT it becomes a real labor of love..

So: first turn the knobs and handles, if they sell move smoothly, no binding, no obvious cracks or miss-alignments then maybe it's time to look at powering the lathe and seeing if that part still works.

Then do something to be able to turn the shafts that the broken wheels are on or levers are on..

Then you can give the lathe a job to do and see if it is still accurate enough for your type an style of work..


I bought a surface grinder once that the guy told me it had tipped over on it's back landing on concrete on the motor/spindle..
The end of the motor cover was distorted, but replaceable. I bought it for dirt cheap: thankfully because I soon discovered that the two vertical ways that the motor and sprinkle ran up and down to feed the grinding wheel into the workpiece had taken such a hard hit that they both had broken from the vertical column, and bowed outward. The grinder was junk.. I did get a descent magnetic chuck from it though..

DualValve.

DualValve . . . great response. Sounds like the voice of experience. Let's hope the OP responds that all's well and the damage is cosmetic.