Boy she is an oldie. That dust accumulation supports your statement about it sitting for some time! At a glance she looks good. What do you need help with, A parts diagram?
How’s the ways look, Any ridges On them?
Yep shes an old one. Well its a lot of small things that Im not too sure about. For starts, the backgear mechanism seems to be a little touchy. Initially the knob that engages/disengages the spindle for the backgears to work was actually not moving. I put some oil in where ever I could and finally got it to move and engage/disengage the spindle. It worked great when moving everything by hand but after a few minutes the knob started popping out and engaging the spindle and freezing up the lathe when the backgears where engaged. It still spins fine when the backgears arent engaged but id like that to work as Im guessing I'll need that should I want to cut some sort of threads for a bolt or something.
The next thing, and probably the bigger question, is what exaclty do I have here? I know its a South Bend and that its a 13", but other than that its a mystery. I tried to locate the serial on the inside of the bed but theres this red clay/wax/plaster caked on the inside and I dont really know what it is or why its there. I found an old sales brochure online from the mid '30s and saw that it looked a lot like a Series S Precision Lathe but I'm not too sure because Ive also seen Model A lathes that look like it too.
Also, it seems that most of the indicators that tell you how many thousandths you are moving both axises are either missing or worn, so I cant really see how much Im machining. Is there a way to replace those and is there some sort of procedure to make sure they're accurate?
The last thing for now is some of the tooling that came with the lathe, specifically the boring bar, or at least what I think is the boring bar. It resembles what I've seen online that could be a boring bar and seems to be all there except that it doesn't have the actual tips installed that you use to actually cut the metal. I don't really recall seeing any sort of way to hold a tip in there and was wondering how exactly that worked?
I know it seems like a lot questions and some of them are probably dumb but Id really appreciate the help. I'd love to get this thing back up and running again. I've been around it since I was a little kid and its always been something I've wanted to learn and use. Now its gotten to the point where a lot of my work, specifically the custom side of fabrication, needs me to get some sort of lathe as I cant afford to keep sending work out. Thank you.