My new lathe has landed

[RobCox]

Final progress for this week as I have other calls on my time.

I got the taper attachment back together and adjusted up. It slides very smoothly now, a decided improvement on it being competely seized when I got the lathe:

After much faffing about with the locating pins (which were absent as the holes in the rear of the cross slide hadn't been reamed out to match the taper attachment) I got it mounted on the cross slide. Some 6mm silver steel made some very nice pins:

The new thrust bearings arrived today so I got the cross slide lead screw fitted, not forgetting to put the feed nuts in place. These have very little backlash but there is one issue.

When I took the feed nuts off the cross slide, the adjustment wedge had been drilled on another side. It should only have one dimple in it, a grubscrew pushes it down to adjust backlash and the dimple stops it falling out sideways:

Clearly some bodgery has gone on here. A bit of detective work shows the reason. The two sections of the nut must be spaced by the threads on the leadscrew. Lining them up with the securing holes shows the correct spacing:

Now, with the wedge inserted in it's correct orientation, the wedge is clearly not wide enough and it drops through and hits the leadscrew:

Some bright spark rotated it 90 degrees and added an extra drill hole to secure it like this:

The problem is the sharp corner digs in the the rear nut part and it doesn't slide nicely to adjust. I'm going to mill a replacement next week and fix this properly.

The oversize taper pin arrived so I could fit the apron together properly. I got a 3" long 9/32" pin and chopped an inch off the thick end to leave an oversized 1/4" pin. I turned the sawcut to look pretty in my other lathe, using a reamed tapered hole to hole the pin in the chuck:

With a few mm shaved off the other end, we have a properly fitting pin in the drive gear for the carriage feed:

 

[RobCox]

I put new thrust bearings on the feed engagement shaft:

then greased up the gasket I'd cut out and sealed up the bottom of the apron:

A new bellows was supplied to me with the lathe to replace the remains of the existing one so that went on:

and the apron was fully assembled apart from the feed handwheel:

To fit it you need two hands to lift it and a third one to do up the fixing bolts. In the absence of a third forelimb I winched the apron into position using my gantry. It's easier to do this with the on/off rod removed:

With some new T nuts made to secure the compound and some new gib adjusting screws made (which now fill the tapered gib adjustment holes and avoid pushing on a tiny corner of the gib) the carriage assembly is looking a bit more complete:

 

[RobCox]

This lathe has dual reading (imperial/metric) dials for the cross slide and compound. I took this apart as it felt a bit rough:

There's a large spring clip holding the imperial/metric selector ring on. I took this off then pulled off the selector ring. I felt something hit my leg and realised I'd just done something stupid. The ring has two detents and tiny springs with tiny ball bearings. I found both springs and one ball bearing, which measures as 3/32". A replacement ball was easy to source, the springs would have been an issue:

This dial has some of the smallest grub screws I've come across locking various bits together. They take a 1.5mm allen key:

Inside the dial there are 3 gears. The two ring gears are probably 127 and 125 which together with an idler exactly move the scales the right amount even though the leadscrew is imperial. With the 127 driven directly by the handle and the metric dial connected to the 125, a single turn of the handle (0.200" on the imperial dial) rotates the 0-5mm metric dial by 127/125 x 5.00mm = 5.08mm. Very simple and potentially very useful:

The handwheel drives the threaded part above with a pin in the slot in the thread which is locked to the 127 gear. The central bit that needs a pin spanner rotates on the 125 gear and drives the metric scale. I'll get a pic of the whole thing assembled once the paint has dried on another part.

 

[Martin-Sy]

Looking great Rob. Did you know it needed this much work when bought it?

 

[iNf]

I took this off then pulled off the selector ring. I felt something hit my leg and realised I'd just done something stupid. The ring has two detents and tiny springs with tiny ball bearings. I found both springs and one ball bearing, which measures as 3/32". A replacement ball was easy to source, the springs would have been an issue:

Did exactly the same when I stripped my m250 dials

Found it bleeding awkward trying to get the cover back on without losing the bearings (again!)

 

[Smouser]

I am surprised that you found so many bodges/redneck 'fixes' on the lathe.

It is almost like the previous owner/s had no clue what they were doing.

I promise I did not own it before you

 

[RobCox]

Looking great Rob. Did you know it needed this much work when bought it?

Nope! I thought a quick clean and a splash of paint on the chip tray was all that would be needed.
In truth so far I'm not disappointed. The bed ways are in near perfect condition which was my main reason for getting it and in general it shows no signs of having been worked hard.
The rear spindle bearing was a bit of an unexpected expense but the bodges are typical of a machine that has to be kept running for minimal effort.

 

[indy4x]

@RobCox from memory, the wedge on my M300 cross slide nuts was steel, not sure if Harrison would have changed the material over the years or someone made something to fit on yours

Mine also has the TT attachment, when I got the lathe, the small gib strip in the TT was missing and had been bodged to take out the slop

I've never found one to replace mine so there is currently a 3D printed gib in there, one day I might have the time and skills to make a proper replacement

 

[RobCox]

Another week has passed and the lathe is starting to look a bit more complete. But first, the work that has gone in to get there.

I stripped down the dual reading dial from the compound. This time, I took the sensible approach:

The part that holds the dial to the compound had a loose fitting bronze sleeve. I didn't like that, either it should be tight in the housing or the spindle, so I made a new bush and pressed it in:

Then reamed it to suit the 10mm shaft and fitted new thrust bearings:

Then on to the backlash adjustment wedge for the cross slide screw. I had some coppery coloured bronze that I parted to length, milled to 0.375 x 0.350 x 1.25". The 0.375 is 25thou up on the dimension of the original so it would function properly. It has a 15 degree bevel on it so to mill this it was time to get out the pretty vicethat I bought from @awemawson ages ago. I know it's a grinding vice but needs must:

I had to use a 6 inch cutter here to clear the vice. Yes, I could have vertical milled it, but I prefer the clean finish from the horizontal. The end result is very satisfactory:

Old and new:

I also made a new compound locking plunger. The original was too short resulting in the grubscrew chewing its way into the gib. I found a tiny offcut of 5mm brass which turned out to be exactly the length I needed, all I had to do was wipe it with a file to put the bevel on:

All of which brings us to here:

I put the cross slide on and adjusted the gib. Pulling it forward revealed it got tight... another can of worms opened!

 

[RobCox]

What follows may not be to everybody's taste. I'm not after mechanical perfection, I just want the lathe to work without annoying behaviour. So, I ended up doing a half-arsed scraping job on it. First off, I mapped the wear in the cross slide using a tenths reading DTI in a micrometer stand, using the unworn machined central area as a reference:

The figures are wear, so 3.5 is 0.0035" below the original milled (yes, milled, not ground or scraped!) surface.
Exercise repeated for the saddle:

This is where the half baked approach comes in. I decided, due to the amount of time this machine is taking to get going and the physical awkwardness of scraping the saddle, to only scrape the cross slide, then to review how it slides and decide whether more tinkering was needed. Here's the initial somewhat misleading early stages bluing:

There's still taper on the ways, as verified thus:

Hours later it's within half a thou. At least, thats about the limits of precision moving the DTI round 180 degrees. Everything shifts a tenth here and there.The most worn areas got left low. The result of scraping the ways makes the tapered gib disappear inside and I didn't want to overcook it, so I stopped before I went too far:

Then repeat measurements on the compound. Firstly, the bottom of the base wasn't flat:

This got a quick surface grind to at least bring it a bit flatter:

Then with that flattened I could measure wear in the ways without it rocking:

It turned out to be within a thou. Decision - leave well alone!

 

[RobCox]

Then on to the compound slide. This got a rapid grind on the Eagle - in the full knowledge it wasn't going to be perfectly flat:

It wasn't:

A couple of hours later...

The print is a bit heavy, but I called it a day here.

Time to reassemble things:

Cross slide fitted. The taper attachment slide has to be pulled out to the left to get the screw in, then the attachment is reassembled, finishing with the slide block gib and it's readily accessible adjustment screw (the upper one in the dark, not the one adjusting the slide gib):

And so we have reached an almost functional state:

Tailstock next, then the Ainjest.

 

[MattF]

Ainjest?

 

[RobCox]

Ainjest?

Rapid threading attachment. It allows you to thread at high rpms and disconnects from the leadscrew when it reaches a stop.

 

[awemawson]

Ainjest eh! I've got one of those in a box somewhere kicking about iirc.

Glad to see that vice in use Rob

 

[RobCox]

I stripped the tailstock down yesterday. Some good, some bad.

The good: barrel is ok, taper is fine, as is the bore in the tailstock body. All the major parts work ok.

The bad: paint (stripped it off and will start again), a thick washer under the securing bolt had split, probably from overtightening the cam, the thrust bearing was rusty, the nut is a bit loose on the leadscrew (but will do ok) and somebody's ill treated the handwheel. The shoulder bolt through the handle has a wonky thread and several millimetres of thread are missing in the corresponding hole in the handwheel:

I don't have a thread repair kit and for a one off its a bit expensive. There's plenty of meat around the hole though (shame it was drilled off to one side) so I decided to drill and tap M12, then fit a bolt, drill and tap M8 as a repair. Well, milling a bit closer to the centre, drilling 10.2mm and tapping M12 went fine:

Now, you want a strong repair, don't you? Let's use a nice tough grubscrew to fill the hole, and for good measure use green loctite to make sure it'll never come out:

The first signs that all was not going to go smoothly stared when I tried to use a slitting saw to cut off the excess:

It got through the thread, then sounded unhappy like it wasn't cutting. Stop, get the hacksaw out:

No problem. Mill it flush, also no trouble, although I was taking 0.5mm a time with a 14mm endmill:

The writing was on the wall. A 6.8mm drill went in ok, but a tap? No chance. Squeak, squeak, slip, bind. I stopped before the tap broke. Sometimes I do the sensible thing. So, to get this stub of grubscrew out, I used several mills and drills until it surrendered.

The last drill to clear it was 10.5mm. My centring wasn't all that good.

Rather than go through all this again I drilled and tapped an M8 thread in the end of a nice soft 8.8 grade bolt on the lathe:

Then screwed it in the handwheel (no loctite!) and milled and spot faced it flush:

A bit chattery but there's plenty of thread.

As for the tailstock body, the paint stripper had the filler as well, so it's getting the full tart up treatment!

 

[RobCox]

It's been an exciting week in the workshop - paint, let it dry, paint, let it dry and more paint. Turned out ok though:

Contrast that to the complete mess when I first applied the filler. The filler is 5+ years old and has gone a bit doughy. When mixed with the hardener though it sticks to the cast iron and goes hard. It's very difficult to spread smooth, so I gobbed it on and sanded it right back. Notice how the top is flat and for your 200lb gorilla in the workshop, shaped just like the top of an anvil:

Today I got the tailstock assembled as far as I could. I'm still waiting on a couple of bolts, most notably the shoulder bolt for the handle:

I had a suggestion from @Smouser that maybe I should nickel plate the barrel if it looked a bit rough. When I first cleaned it up it didn't look too special. I thought I'd better really clean it well if I were going to plate it as it doesn't hide the imperfections. After applying metal polish I decided it looked pretty enough as it was:

Somewhere around 1 1/2" is the point where it was left sticking out the housing and inside it was full of fossilised oil, but both the barrel and bore are clean now. The leadscrew has a touch of corrosion but works ok, albeit with a bit of backlash from the worn nut:

To reassemble the dial with it's sprung balls as a friction drive I came across just the ticket:

Can't remember what I made these two half circles for, but they worked a treat.

Other work this week involved making a new toolpost stud to mount the Dickson toolpost that came with my long bed M300 back on it:

And taking the wedge QCTP off and fitting it to the new one:

So now, it's looking like a lathe again! The eagle eyed will notice the on/off lever is missing and I've yet to refit the feed shaft and leadscrew:

 

[RobCox]

More progress, mainly fixing the last few bibs and bobsto make the lathe useable.

I gave the on/off lever housing a paint job. I also tightened up the lever arm and redrilled a new hole for the rollpin as it was pisswobbly. I've mounted it directly on the apron for now as the Ainjest hasn't been sorted yet:

I dismantled, cleaned and reassembled the threading dial. This is not a Harrison original and I'm not mad keen on it. It has a gear train and a selector so it'll work with imperial or metric leadscrews and do a range of metric threads at the flick of a lever, but is big and bulky. I'd like a Harrison one but the only one I can find for sale is in shabby nick and is a bit steeply priced. It's not a complicated item and won't be that difficult to machine one myself.

I ran the lathe headstock under power for the first time, now I've got the on/off lever installed. This is where the annoyances started. First, rattling in the 85/370/1700 rpm position. I took a look in the headstock and found a tiny amount of play in the L/M/H range control. Turns out the pinion on the knob shaft has a tight fitting hole on the rollpin, but the shaft hole is slightly worn. The tiny amount of play allows the selector fork to move freely over a larger range than it should:

This hole is oversized by about 0.2mm, so, drill it a hair larger to produce a clean hole:

Repeat with the pinion:

Then use a larger pin to fit it tightly together:

There was a lot of checking and careful setup to make sure the selector fork would avoid internal gears touching where they shouldn't. It also didn't explain where the noises were coming from (the other control knob determined that), but they've stopped now so I'll investigate further if it recurs.

And just when I thought it was nearly done...

This is one of the camlock cams. I've got a copy of the spec. Machining one might be interesting, but... I don't have the means to broach the square, I'd need to make a rotary grinding fixture to grind it and it needs heat treatment as theyre hard, Plus the cam shape isn't a simple circle, so that would take some sorting out too. So I took the quick approach and bought one. £60!

 

[RobCox]

With all of the bits done, I shifted the lathe back a couple of inches. That was the point of all the messing about with the backsplash after all:

I then sacrificed my sanity and got out the precision levels and levelled it. I know it will need doing again after it's had chance to settle but it was way out, never having been checked since I put it's feet on:

That will do for now. So, now it's back together, you know how you always have that one screw that went, um, somewhere? Well, I've got all these bits left over:

And so, after four months of over the top refurbishment, it's ready to use (and make it dirty/chip the paint):

I still have the Ainjest to clean up, the bed clamp for the TTA to sort (spoiler alert, it's not a Harrison, I'm guessing it's a Colchester one as all the fittings are UNC, not metric) and I'm going to make a new on/off cam as the lever has to over travel slightly to get the microswitches to operate. But, all the work will be done with this lathe now!

 

[MattF]

So, now it's back together, you know how you always have that one screw that went, um, somewhere? Well, I've got all these bits left over:

That's an impressive collection.

 

[Martin-Sy]

So I took the quick approach and bought one.

Out of interest, where from?
I guess these are D1-4.
I'd like some D1-3's but last time I looked I could only find them in the USA.