For the manner in which men live is so different from the way in which they ought to live, that he who leaves the common course for that which he ought to follow will find that it leads him to ruin rather than safety.
-Machiavelli

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South Bend rebuild

I'm going to log the rebuild of my new South Bend lathe on this page. As it progresses, I might break it down into a couple pages, by assembly. The first of many boring pictures to come is the tailstock.

The tailstock, before removal. It has a Jacob's chuck, and two inches of travel.




Tailstock, all torn down. It needs some cleaning.
 Some motor mayhem..

Here's 30 pounds of WTF for ya. This is a very old Baldor motor, 3/4hp. I can't find much info on it. Unfortunately it needs to come apart.
With the end caps and armature removed. I've worked on quite a few electric motors, but never one like this. The large hole with the threaded rod in the upper right really threw me for a loop. I thought it was just capped with lead as an anti sabotage, however....

....those holes go straight through the winding laminations, and are filled with lead! I used a hack saw, vise-grips, acetylene torch, hammer, and other tools of destruction to get this thing apart. I thought I would only need to melt a little bit of lead out of the hole, but I was WAY off base. The way this motor is built, it makes me think that it was not designed to ever come back apart, not this far anyway.  However, the power leads were cut so short that I needed to get inside the housing to splice new pigtails in.
 
Following, in no real particular order, is the headstock coming apart. I think soon, I will have to get these pictures into a more organized state.














Getting into the cleaning and inspection phase. The bed is looking good, according to my poor man's check for flatness.



The table is painted and assembled.

Spanner bits are available from a few vendors to disassemble the compound and cross feed screws. I made my own.

Before getting laid off from my old job, I had access to a walnut media blaster. Well...without that blaster, I'm using paint stripper to remove the rest of the paint.

My half nuts are worn out. Looks like it will cost about $115 to have them refurbished. We'll see how that goes once I send them out.

I gave the dials the scotch-brite special.

Update as of March 10...
There has been NO progress on this lathe in quite some time. Other projects have commanded my time and my funds. I am determined, however, to make this happen. A fair chunk of change has to be spent in order to finish this lathe. One of the things, as mentioned above, that needs attention is the half nut assembly. It is worn the hell out! I found a vendor on E-Bay who remanufactures these half nuts. He also makes new cross slide and compound nuts. Money has been sent...and the half nuts just have to be sent to be reworked...

Worn...the...hell...out

These threads are done. Like finished...kaput...

Worn to a razor's edge.

So...now that the half nuts are on the way out for rework, it will be easier to start working on everything else. You see, the apron can't go together without them. Which means that NOTHING could happen until I took care of this. Worn half nuts are a show stopper. Let's see if I can keep the momentum going once they return to my hands.
How's that for fast? Less than a week to turn around my half nuts along with a set of compound and cross slide nuts.

I finally got the bed cleaned up too. The first coat of paint is on. Second coat to come soon, then it'll probably sit for a few weeks to cure completely before I start assembling.

What's still on the to do list? Well, I need a new motor and tooling. Those are the biggest items on the list right now. Belts, assembly, table top. A ways to go, but I'm back on track.


 Just a bit of placeholder text, ignore me ;)

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