South Bend 14.5" Lathe, Here We Go Again

Just picked this lathe up from auction, 14.5" x 6ft, Cat No. 183C, SN. 152657 (1944 I belive)


This is the only decent image I have of it, as the ones I took didnt come out so well.
To get it off the trailer I had to break it down to its main parts. This took about 3 hours and some help, but we got there.
I will insepect it more later, but on first inspection, there is only a small ridge on the bed, the gear train definitely has some wear, and the compound and cross slide are completely frozen in place. None of these things bother me too much, and I'm sure I will find more as I dig into it, but its quite a step from the 9" JR I got last March and I've been thinking about getting something a bit larger when this appeared.
There is however some evidence someone has done some welding on parts while they were in the lathe...how exciting.

What have I gotten into this time?

-Aaron

Wear and welding

EDIT: I looked at the parts some more, there is a DC gear motor installed in the pedestal. 160 FL RPM. That kind of confirms my suspicions of what this lathe was used for

Well I hate to leave things hanging, so Here it is now:


Its not 100% but its clean now, and somewhat usable...but thats as far as it goes.
I knew going into this that there was a lot of wear on this lathe but I decided to go forward with it anyways.

Probably not the best decision I have ever made.

I severely underestimated the wear just on the bed ways, measuring between the saddle and the flat tailstock way, I can see movement of about .015" from where it travels from the unworn section under the headstock, to the most worn section right out the end of the chuck. This is causing the lathe to cut a nasty taper in that area.
Here is a close up of the worn ways:



With all that being said, I'm faced with a decision to either
Find someone to grind or plane the bed,
Find another, less worn bed,
Sell the lathe as is, or
Part the lathe out


Parting it out is the obvious choice, selling it a close second if I can find someone that wants to buy it which thus far I have had no luck, Finding a bed will be very difficult I suspect, and I don't know of anyone in the southeast US that will grind or plane the bed, and as has clearly been stated all over this forum, it is generally not worth it to get that service done to a south bend.

So that's where I'm at.
Unless anyone knows of someone to machine the bed then if anyone wants to make me an offer on the entire lathe, feel free. Otherwise, I will probably end up parting it out as best I can.

Well it certainly looks like you put a lot of work in to freshen it up.

While the number .015" certainly sounds not very good. A couple of points. One, your test method is not going to translate into .015" on the work you're cutting. If I read correctly, you are going from saddle, to straight down to flat way. Essentially, a reading from 12 or 6 oclock to the work being cut.

Lathe tools cut at 9 oclock. If your number is correct at .015" drop straight down, The actual affect at cutting from 9 oclock is a lot less severe than the .015", at a guess, I'm thinking maybe .004" difference in actual work being cut.

The next point would be, how much distance for that overall drop ? 1" ? 12" ? 24 inches ? I don't know. But I'll guess over the distance of 12". I would also guess most jobs you cut will be 2 or 3 inches in length, so the difference in actual drop over 2 or 3 inches will be much smaller.

Measuring from saddle to flat way is not really a fair measure. What you really want is to measure a test bar coming out of spindle. From saddle to test bar. Or maybe a real nice piece of stock, or test bar in a collet with collet adapter.

Getting a real good alignment of headstock and tail stock can help flatten that perceived .015" also. Most ways wear under/around chuck, and gradually ways go up hill toward tail stock. Minor shimming of chuck side of head stock will bring it closer to parallel with ways. Using test bars in both head stock and tail stock, you will work towards a middle ground of best overall point of "everything pointed at center", and true to ways.

During these alignments, you'll be going back and forth. Minor increment changes, right, left, up, down, whatever. Check, check, Check, and do it again. Slowly you can get it dialed in fairly well.

You may not come to perfect zero, but I feel pretty sure you can greatly improve the number you're seeing.

What is that contraption underneath the carriage? Is it some kind of feed disconnect?

texasgunsmith said:

Well it certainly looks like you put a lot of work in to freshen it up.

While the number .015" certainly sounds not very good. A couple of points. One your test method is not going to translate into .015" on the work you're cutting. If I read correctly, you are going from saddle, to straight down to flat way. Essentially, a reading from 12 or 6 oclock to the work being cut.

Lathe tools cut at 9 oclock. If your number is correct at .015" drop straight down, The actual affect at cutting from 9 oclock is a lot less severe than the .015", at a guess, I'm thinking maybe .004" difference in actual work being cut.

The next point would be, how much distance for that overall drop ? 1" ? 12" ? 24 inches ? I don't know. But I would guess most jobs are going to be shorter cuts, So the difference in number will much smaller.

Measuring from saddle to flat way is not really a fair measure. What you really want is to measure a test bar coming out of spindle. From saddle to test bar. Or maybe a real nice piece of stock, or test bar in a collet with collet adapter.

Getting a real good alignment of headstock and tail stock can help flatten that perceived .015" also. Most ways wear under/around chuck, and gradually ways go up hill toward tail stock. Minor shimming of chuck side of head stock will bring it closer to parallel with ways. Using test bars in both head stock and tail stock, you will work towards a middle ground of best overall point of "everything pointed at center", and true to ways.

During these alignments, you'll be going back and forth. Minor increment changes, right, left, up, down, whatever. Check, check, Check, and do it again. Slowly you can get it dialed in fairly well.

You may not come to perfect zero, but I feel pretty sure you can greatly improve the number you're seeing.

Click to expand...

Theres a lot of ways to measure the wear in a lathe bed, I have read a few of them, and im sure there are many others, this is one of the ways I found, and it holds true from what I can see.

I can do the same measurement on a ground piece of tube I have laying around, which is within .001" over approx 12" of its length. I will get the same reading I am seeing when measuring to the bed.
Most of the movement is in the first 2" or so, afterwards it only moves about .005" through the rest of the length of my test piece.
Also I know the headstock is in alignment with the bed, because I can move my indicator to the left of where the cutter would normally be (in relation to the carriage, thus eliminated the first 2" of normal travel essentially) and I will see the .005" of movement on the indicator through the whole distance of my test piece.
And I should note, I am not using the tailstock at all to take these measurements.
Edit: heres a video measuring on my test piece,
and @SLK001, yes it is an automatic carriage stop Here are the serial card scans, you can see it was fitted at the factory, a quite rare feature from what I can tell reading around

Lanix said:

...and @SLK001, yes it is an automatic carriage stop Here are the serial card scans, you can see it was fitted at the factory, a quite rare feature from what I can tell reading around...

Click to expand...

I have never seen one of those before. Not even in any SB catalog. Rare indeed.

Lathe tools cut at 9 oclock. If your number is correct at .015" drop straight down, The actual affect at cutting from 9 oclock is a lot less severe than the .015", at a guess, I'm thinking maybe .004" difference in actual work being cut.

Click to expand...

Depends on dia. 1" dia and .015 effects the semi dia as the cosine on the angle resulting.

.015 divided by .500 results an an angle of 1.719 whose cosine is .9995 - so 1/2 thou added to that radius - and less as the dia. goes up

Another way to look at this...if the carriage / saddle assy was able to DROP the .015 in say 6" - the lathe would have a built in taper of .001 in six inches of travel

Hello! if you decide to part out i would love to buy parts from you! PM me as soon as you decide. I need quite a few items.

Jacked up headstock

I Raised the head on my 150 yo Prentice to spin a few 290 Lycoming
A.c. engine crank cases cut flange.
Also VW cr.cases
Icut a dozen3 in. Pcs.drill rod. Clamped in bundle
S of 3.welded ends
set it down on long
bolts. Triples in vees
s& ways lined up perfect. Built tool riser. Did it again
For more lift.
Torchman

My SB 14-1/2 has a very similar amount of wear on the ways, but is still capable of doing good work. IIRC, I'm getting about .0005 taper over a 6" cut... I have 3 lathes, and the SB is my 'go to' lathe...

I did have to do a little 'selective leveling' when I initially set it up around 4 years ago. No problems with it since then.

-Bear