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Shoving The Apron

mcload

Hot Rolled
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Location
Houston, Texas
I remember as a late teen working on my Dad's '46-9A lathe that I would sometimes
shove the entire saddle back out of the way as opposed to using the handwheel gear (4' bed).
Of course, I don't do that now. I guess I must have been in a hurry at the time.

But I was just wondering if this is bad for the saddle/apron assembly or not.
I'm not talking "strip gear" speed, just a moderate shove. I can't see how it
could be.

Probably a dumb question.

PMc

View attachment 289147
 
I've done it before. The only harm would be if it slid into your tail-stock and tool bits collided or it kept sliding and pushed something off the end of the bed. Especially on bigger lathes with good ways, the carriage and tail-stock have some mass and can keep sliding if you're not careful.

On that note, one helpful bit to do is keep a C-clamp on the right side of the bed between the ways to keep from accidentally sliding the tail-stock off the bed. We had an old Taiwan lathe with an ugly welded together tail-stock hand wheel as a reminder not to push it too far. Later we started threading 3-4" long bolts into the end of our lathe beds as stops.

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