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My SB 16" with hydraulic tracer attachment

This is not a recent acquisition, it is something that I bought and assembled in the mid 1990's. I bought the Tru-Trace attachment from a widow of a man who purchased a new lathe with this tracer attachment, probably in about 1980. He died without seeing any use of his purchase. I bought an old reprobate SB 16" to mount this tracer on. I had to do a lot of re-furbishing of this old lathe before I could use it. The way surfaces on the bottom of the cross-slide were so worn that I had to machine away some of the bottom of the cross-slide to keep the casting from rubbing on the bedways. I also used a dovetail cutter to re-cut the worn dovetail on top of the cross-slide. I had to make a new cross-slide acme screw and nut. The acme lead screw was so worn near the headstock that I had to make a new one. I was able to use the old lead screw to cut the new one, just using the unworn part of the lead screw. After moving the new screw to cut the rest of the threads, I had to pick up the cut and continue the cut.

After re-furbishing this lathe, I attached the taper attachment, and used the machine to cut all the spindles and newell posts out of red oak for my new retirement house on the lake. There are three flights of stairs, and a total of about 130 spindles and newell posts. I mounted a Milwaukee 4 1/2 inch grinder with a cutter that is 4 1/2 inches in diameter with three 1/4" diameter round carbide cutters. For most of the spindles, I could finish them with 3 cuts at about 45 minutes machining time per spindle. I have a 5 hp cyclone Tempest dust collector hooked up to this machine. This Milwaukee grinder has run about 250 hours continuous duty since it was new, and is still going strong.

The last project that I just finished, and learned some new facts about this method of tracer turning with the 3 tooth carbide cutter was turning two small diameter spindles for the antique chair shown. This chair was brought to me by a old dear friend to see if I could make some new spindles. Well, I was pleasantly surprised when I turned these spindles out of a piece of 2 inch square white oak 36 inches long. I was concerned that there would be so much spring in the workpiece that I might not be able to do it. I was surprised to find out that there was practically no spring in the workpiece, which got down to 9/16 inch diameter in the smallest part.

My theory is that since there were 3 teeth carbide in the periphery of the cutter, and the cutter was rotating at about 3600 rpm, the pressure exerted by each tooth on the workpiece was so instantaneous that it did not have time to build up enough pressure on the workpiece to cause it to flex. I thought that this was a singular curcumstance worthy enough of your attention.

Lord Byron
 

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Very nice attachment running on your SBL 16! I don't think you could find a more heavy duty wood lathe than that! lol

I have something similar on an old shopsmith (10ER) wood lathe. The guy I bought it from said he bought it from a guy in Texas who was making them back in the 50s. He called it a duplicator. I haven't used it yet, but for spindle work I can see how that would shine.

Very nice work!
 








 
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