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10L W/chip pan, need short leg

Mike DeHart

Aluminum
Joined
Jan 27, 2011
Location
South Jersey, USA
New acquisition is a heavy 10 toolroom model that has been sitting in a trailer for near 40 years. It looks like it got dropped on its face in transit years ago. It has many broken handles and a couple of broken parts I would consider critical. One of those parts is the short leg that goes between the chip pan and the end of the bed. The people here helped me dig up parts for another 10L a few years ago. I am hoping for a little more of that magic for this one. Does anyone have a short leg hidden in their stash of extras?

On a quick initial cleanup, the bed ways appear to be in good condition. Somebody must have coated everything in grease or cosmoline when they laid this thing up way back when. I took a soft rotary wire brush to what I thought was heavy surface rust, and sticky black goo got flung all over everything. I ruined yet another T-shirt. I was very surprised to find the ways clean and showing no wear ridge along the entire length. The appearance of heavy rust and the broken bits are how it came to my garage. I was its last hope before going to be melted down. The condition of the bed is the machine begging me for another chance at life. And since it is a toolroom model, I think it deserves to be rebuilt and put back in to useful service. Besides, my work shop is a mile from the house and it would be so much more convenient to have a lathe at the shop as well as in the basement. But without a solid leg, I don't have a machine. I only have a pile of parts. Who else out there takes pity on the old, unwanted, and "unfixable" like I do?
 
If you are willing to spend enough money and effort, anything on that lathe is replace/repairable. Those kinds of things show up eBay from time to time. Just keep looking and maybe you will get lucky.
 
I knew I was among like minded people here. I have the disease for sure!

I contacted one well known parts guy already, but he did not have my part. Of course I will be watching ebay for this and a handful of other parts I need. Still, if someone has one to sell I am interested in buying. In the mean time, I will probably take a shot at a brazing repair to my broken leg. Brazing is not new to me. And I figure I can't make it any broker.
 
Brazing didn't go so well. When the casting was broken, it deformed and bent a bit, enough that the pieces did not fit back together cleanly. Given the machined surfaces, I am calling it officially broken beyond repair. In the meantime, I did braze it together anyway. I tacked it at the ends of each fracture by notching with a grinder and dropping braze into the notches. This is holding it together enough that I could reattach the leg. The machine is in one piece again and holding well enough to move it around and out of the way.

I have begun cleaning up some components. Things look like they will clean up pretty well. I have high hopes for this lathe. I did find another broken casting that I would consider critical. It it the follower of the taper attachment. This is the piece with a gib that travels along the dovetail bed when cutting a taper. It also has the threaded stud for the binding lever coming up out of the top of it. Any help in locating one of these would be greatly appreciated. The cross feed will not work without this piece. Thanks, all.
 
That worked! Easier than I thought it would be. Ignore the other junk in the shop. Those are not the projects you are looking for.......
I may just do a cleanup and service on this one, leaving the "patina" of three different paint jobs. It has a kind of rat rod cool about it. The chuck cleaned up really well after a soak in Evaporust. It was rusted tight and it took a lot of effort to get the jaws out. Now they move like they should. As you can see, the UMD belt handle is broken, the halfnut lever is broken, the carriage handwheel shaft is badly bent, the handwheel handle is gone, the gear train guards are smashed, and the cross feed crank handle is gone. You can't see the broken short leg or the broken taper follower in this view, but you can see the ratchet strap that was holding the tail end together so I could hoist it out of my old truck.

Also:
Catalog # CL 8187 A; Serial # 9875 RKX 14
 
Ouch. That apron look sort of like mine did, after it took a header off the stool it was resting on. This was my original 10, also cast iron base (single tumbler).

I took the entire carriage off the machine to clean it up, and set it aside. But not carefully enough. Landed on the traverse handwheel and broke the shaft, and cracked the casting where the boss comes out. Bad words.

I was able to use all-thread to pull the crack back closed, and the welder at work used Ni rod to stitch it closed. It was never oil tight after that....

The bore through the casting was not right either, so I reamed it straight and made an oversized shaft. Silver soldered the pinion gear on the end, a side benefit was I had the tightest old lathe travese handwheel ever. Gone was the floppy wheel effect.
 
Ouch! That must have hurt worse than if you had dropped it on your toe. glad you were able to fix it. Also glad to hear the traverse gear can be silver soldered to a new shaft. I was thinking about if that could be done or not. My apron casting appears to be OK. Boring out the gear and making a new shaft for it sounds easy enough.

I pulled out the spindle assy and pressed it apart. That was seized, so I wanted to know if it was bad or not. I found the same petrified black goo and petrified oil wicks. The chuck end bearing journal had a ridge that mic'd 0.001" over the places where it rode on the bearing sleeve. It also had a little bit of rust staining. I worked the ridge down with stones then polished it to 400 grit paper in oil. It mic's even now and looks pretty good. I plan to polish thru 600 grit if I can find where I put my sandpaper box. With a good spindle, I see a green light to making it live again.

If I can't source a replacement leg, is there any reason not to carve one out of a solid block of aluminum? I can blueprint the broken casting. And I can functionally reproduce it on the mill. It might look a little funny, though.
 
I have an update, for the technically curious. The headstock is rebuilt, painted, shimmed properly, and smooth as silk. The reverse tumbler gears look like new. The apron is stripped, cleaned, and painted. That gets felts and rebuild soon. I made a new handwheel shaft from 9/16" precision ground o-1 steel. Still have to silver braze the bored out gear onto the shaft, but I ran out of oxygen on my last cutting job. The motor base is completely disassembled and scrubbed clean. It gets some body putty and paint this weekend, along with the long leg. If all goes well, the bed will get a scrub and repaint as well. The mid-shaft bearings have a knock in them, so that gets broken down next.

My 3 kids all beat me up about the paint. They told me that I can't rebuild everything and put in all the new service parts and NOT repaint it. They promised to help with the scrubbing and painting. So far I have scrubbed and painted a few parts...... alone. Maybe they will help paint the big parts like the stand and leg? Anyone willing to take that bet?
 
I am still in the market for a short leg for this machine. This is the piece I need:
LegBroke1.jpg

In the past 3 months I have made some good progress on this. The motor cabinet and drive assembly are cleaned, painted, new bearings, new motor. The bed and long leg are painted. The chip pan is prepped for paint. Once I source that elusive short leg, I can assemble the basic machine. I have also been making repair parts. I figure broken parts are already broken, so no harm in trying some tricks on them. I brazed a steel bar onto the broken half-nut hub. Then I whittled it down to shape with various files, turned a knob on my ancient little AMT benchtop lathe, and pressed them together. That piece looks decent, in my opinion. I did the same for the broken belt engage crank. I used a couple of pieces of 3/4" sch-40 pipe to make that handle. I heated an area and bent the pipe to get the needed offset for the crank. Then sawed it at the right place and hammered it oval to kinda match the original profile at the hub. I clamped the hub to a piece of angle iron, then clamped the pipe crank in position on a stack of scrap to fixture it in place for brazing. The handle end was cut to length and squashed a bit in the vise to make a cradle for the handle piece. The handle piece was closed on one end by cutting it into 4 wedges, like flower petals. Those petals were heated and hammered down to make a full radius closed end. This was finished by torch welding the seams and various use of grinder, files, and sandpaper. Then that was brazed to the crank. It does not look stock, but it does work first rate. And I don't plan to take this machine to any antique lathe shows where some judge would ding me points on a shop fabbed handle.

CJM-Handle3.jpg
BeltHandle2 (2).jpg
 

Attachments

  • LegBroke1.jpg
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Still picking away at the broken bits on this machine. This time I made the crank handle for the traverse handwheel.
TravHandle.jpg
I went with brass for this. The lathe needs jewelry. And I tried a different method this time. the half-nut knob was turned using the cranks on the little AMT benchtop lathe. That was maddening, like trying to make a circle on an Etch-A-Sketch. This time I had some better ideas. I chucked the brass in the 3-jaw. Then drilled and reamed to 0.252" for a running fit on a 1/4" shaft. Countersink cut for an 8-32 flat head cap screw to fit flush. Turned the OD round, turned down the shoulder, and chopped out some rough form. Then I got out a wood lathe scraping tool. It was triangular on the tip with a radius, flat top tool. I used the tail of the tool holder as a tool rest and I cut the brass like turning a spindle on a wood lathe. Light cuts just below centerline made fine shavings and a smooth finish. I was able to cut the recurve of the knob with clean fluid motions. It came out really nice. I finished it with light sanding and metal polish. Then I cut it off with a hacksaw.

I had to trim the bottom end somehow. I couldn't chuck it by the ball end. I needed to hold it from the bore on a shaft. Making a mandrel seemed like too much for this one part. Then a fishing pole repair trick popped into my mind. The eye tips are glued on with stick shellac, heated with a match and smeared onto the rod end. I dipped a 1/4" shaft in shellac and worked it into the bore. Then I heated it with a torch to dry out the alcohol. Then ran it under cold water to harden the shellac. Chucked up the shaft and trimmed the end with light cuts and polish. The torch softened it to remove the shaft. Then it was cleaned off quickly with a rag soaked in alcohol. It worked like a charm. Here is the complete apron, before and after. Parts made are the handwheel shaft, handwheel knob, and the half-nut lever.
ApronBefore.jpg
ApronAfter.jpg
 
Texas, that brass is 100% USDA Scrapbinium Basementalloy. It has been carefully tempered in a non climate controlled damp cellar for 10 years minimum, until it had grown a healthy green beard of perfection, like a properly hung and aged side of beef. It was yellow when I cut it.

The machine is a Heavy-10 toolroom model with cast iron motor housing, chip pan, and extended range "W-and-a-half" gearbox. It should be just a stock 10L from what I can figure. It looks all original. Every part has the same four layers of paint: Original SB grey, painted Rustoleum(?) grey over that, painted some bright bubble gum green over that, painted diaper brown over that. The serial number matched up on SWells site as being 1958 +/- a year. The handwheel boss on the apron and the handwheel stem both are significantly longer than the ones on my 1951 model 10L that has the single tumbler gearbox. Maybe the extended handwheel was for clearance around the large dial crossfeed? The large dial has a longer extension from the carriage than my older small dial.
 
Kevin T, Thank you. Maybe this knob came out nice enough to include it in the "What have you made FOR your SB" thread? My method was a little off script but it worked well. That might help someone down the road.
 
Texas, that brass is 100% USDA Scrapbinium Basementalloy. It has been carefully tempered in a non climate controlled damp cellar for 10 years minimum, until it had grown a healthy green beard of perfection, like a properly hung and aged side of beef. It was yellow when I cut it.

Could be me, or the lighting, but it looks like it might have a higher copper content in its mixture. Looks nice.
 
The South Bend Forum has come through again! A member reached out to me with a stash of 10L parts that will help bring this machine back to life. BIG thank you to that member! I got a boxful this week with several items I needed for this lathe and another I have been working on for far too long. Included in the box was a short leg that will work with this one. It isn't the original style with the leveling screws. But it is an older style that has some nice shape to it, not just a rectangular box with ears that looks like it was made from Lego blocks. I like it. No pictures to share yet. I was in a hurry to get it cleaned up. The first coat of paint is drying right now. If all goes as planned, I will have the motor cabinet, bed, pan, and legs reassembled next week. With the basic spine back together, it will start looking like progress. Then the components can be put in their proper places as they are rebuilt. I can almost smell the chips rolling off of it already. But for now there is still plenty of work to be done. QCGB disassembly is next up on the bench.
 
Long time, no update. Other things had to be worked on lately. But progress is being made. The bed, motor base, UMD unit, pan, and legs are all assembled. It is rising up from its ashes. The gearbox is in process. Gears all look exceptionally good. The center bearing was seized tight. Good thing I didn't just oil it and try to run. I should thank the kids for shaming me into a full rebuild.

I picked up a 3-jaw chuck last weekend for it. It is a 6" Horton, made in CT. It looks to be in really good condition. Everything is really tight, and maybe too tight. I had to use a gear puller to remove the back cover. I cleaned it all and checked for burrs. It was all good. I measured the back cover and the chuck body bore it goes in. Right now I am showing a 0.003" press fit between the two pieces. That does not sound right to me. Every chuck I have worked came apart easily for cleaning and lube. It seems to me that it should be a close easy fit, not a hard press. Can anyone offer a reason not to shave the ID of the chuck body to make it slip together like every other chuck?
 
This machine is making chips once again! I had to change my plan a little, though. It got cold. The original bell base and open leg assembly was all back together with the bed bolted on it when winter crashed the party. In my basement is a loopy-leg cabinet for my 1951 single tumbler 10L that I have not finished rebuilding yet. I figure one working machine is better than two in pieces, so I pulled the grey 1958 bed and bolted it to the green 1952 cabinet. I was able to assemble the grey machine completely in the comfort of my chilly basement, which was far better than the unheated workshop. And down the road, when I get past the hang up I have on the green 1951, I can pull the grey one off and put it right back onto its original base at the shop. In the meantime, I have a working 10L in the basement where it will get more use.

DoneOnGreen01.jpg

I made a knob for the cross slide to match the one on the carriage handwheel.

DoneOnGreen02.jpg

I also made a new axle pin for the tailstock handwheel knob to replace the bent original. The knob was fine and was saved, so it doesn't match the brass ones. I'm fine with that. I scored a taper follower casting from ebay and put that together. The cross feed screw and nut have a lot of wear, but they work OK. I might use this lathe to make its own replacements later.

The piece in the chuck in the pics will be the spider for the back end of the spindle. The spider will then be used to make the handwheel collet draw tube that I need. This machine is working very well. On my ancient little AMT, which made parts for this, I had to drill through with several successively larger drill bits. On this, I used my 1/2" drill bit as the pilot drill straight through, then followed with my 1-1/8" bit, the biggest I have. This machine rolled out huge spirals of chips that won't fit through the spindle bore of the AMT. I like this one. I have graduated to a more capable machine.
 








 
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