Thread: New guy bought a No.4 (M-1420) - How'd I do?

Originally Posted by ChriS2000

Is there a way to move the turret carriage/slide to the end of the bed without running the machine?

If you mean move the whole turret works away from the chuck, yes, there are 8 or so clamp bolts under the body of the carriage, you loosen them and just slide it back. 3/4 hex head IIRC.

Originally Posted by michiganbuck

Would be good to get an operators manual..You might run an add in Craigslist for someone to show you what the the handles do.. I ran one years ago just for simple turning so would be no help at all.

Very nice looking machine.

I've got a copy of "Tools" and "Turret Lathe Operators Manual", a M-1420 specific manual will be here on Monday but I'd like to get some work done over the holiday weekend on it.

Originally Posted by Mud

If you mean move the whole turret works away from the chuck, yes, there are 8 or so clamp bolts under the body of the carriage, you loosen them and just slide it back. 3/4 hex head IIRC.

By loosening those bolts does it disengage the carriage from the shaft that normally moves it?

Originally Posted by ChriS2000

By loosening those bolts does it disengage the carriage from the shaft that normally moves it?

No - that business is moveable for differing jobs, and slides up and down the shaft driving same

"Carriage" clamps down - only the ram (with its turret) moves under power for chores like drilling and boring

Originally Posted by johnoder

No - that business is moveable for differing jobs, and slides up and down the shaft driving same

"Carriage" clamps down - only the ram (with its turret) moves under power for chores like drilling and boring

Ooooooh ok so the only power movement of the turret/ram/carriage is the same movement you can do manually with the big spoked wheel?

Originally Posted by ChriS2000

Ooooooh ok so the only power movement of the turret/ram/carriage is the same movement you can do manually with the big spoked wheel?

Indeed. Big spoked wheel is "in the main" the means to rapidly retract ram (with turret) - at which time the turret will auto index to the next tool, and then just as rapidly allows reposition of the new position tool to the point where you engage the power feed and take a brief breather (so maybe you jump to the left to get the cross slide doing its thing again)

Those were the days when one had spent the better part of 10 hours making this thing sing - and you went home more or less whipped.

Not at all a bad thing - legions of ladies/gals/moms did it all through WW2 - and there are classic photos of such to see (and to a lesser extent in WW1)

Originally Posted by johnoder

Indeed. Big spoked wheel is "in the main" the means to rapidly retract ram (with turret) - at which time the turret will auto index to the next tool, and then just as rapidly allows reposition of the new position tool to the point where you engage the power feed and take a brief breather

Those were the days when one had spent the better part of 10 hours making this thing sing - and you went home more or less whipped.

Not at all a bad thing - legions of ladies/gals/moms did it all through WW2 - and there are classic photos of such to see

I can only imagine, the GI's probably came back to discover their ladies had much better upper body strength!

This beast is still a roll of the dice until I can test all the speeds / feeds, but I do know how to take care of a machine. It'll have a good remainder of its life as long as I dont discover any problems that make it impractical to fix.

Corey at Gahr (Small Tools) said it's ok to use regular ATF in the headstock. I'll probably flush and fill with that to do the test run, then fill with Mobil DTE Medium for the "duty" fill. I'm pretty sure there's a chunk of the preselector wheel floating around in the headstock somewhere....

I'm pretty sure there's a chunk of the preselector wheel floating around in the headstock somewhere....

Don't lose any sleep over that. I fished an entire plastic handled paintbrush (about 2-1/2" wide) out of my #3 that had been chewed up into smallish chunks by the headstock gears after i bought it. Seems someone dropped it in one of the access caps on the top and it got digested. Didn't faze the lathe one bit, it made lots of parts after that, still runs fine years later. Swayseys aren't immortal, but they are hard to hurt.

Here are some 1934 scans - when they still had threaded spindle noses. Not much room in the headstock and two sets of "chucking" tooling.

I would not be surprised to find that the M-1420 was different inside

Well it took a whole Sunday to move this beast 30 feet across my shop and get it off the pallet, but it's finally in place.







I was able to figure out how to slide the turret carriage back and get a look at the ways near the chuck, looks pretty decent to me for the age.



I went to tractor supply and got some cheap iso 46 hydraulic oil for the headstock and carriages for the initial test runs.

Next step is running a 220v circuit to that side of the shop for the phase converter. Before running the machine I'll do the leveling and alignment procedures from the manual after everything is cleaned and lubed.