Grayson lathe

[Gas mark 5]

I know nothing about lathes, but keep coming across jobs where it would be handy to have one, so picked this up a while back. Been meaning to put it into service for longer than I care to admit, so hoping a thread here will help spur me into action.



It's a 3.5"x18" Grayson. It seems to my uneducated eye to be in reasonable condition, a few dings here and there, but no heavy wear on the ways, and only a few spots of light surface rust. Came with a three and four jaw chuck, faceplate and a bunch of change wheels. The cross slide jams up halfway, but I suspect it is just dried up oil, and the tailstock is missing a few grubscrews etc. but nothing major I hope. Not planning a full restoration or anything, just want to start making some swarf!

I need to make a bench for it, so the first question for the collective is how important is leveling / mounting surface flatness? I notice the lathes.co.uk description mentions the tailstock feet give the owner "an opportunity to distort things by bolting it to an uneven surface". Is a random sheet of 19mm ply sufficient, or does it need to be precision shimmed, and how would I tell how much shimming is required? Is accurate level sufficient to gauge any twist along the bed?

Thanks in advance all, I'm sure there'll be plenty more questions to come.







P.S. What's a good replacement for an alternator belt and a bunch of staples...?

 

[skotl]

Looks a nice lathe, and a good project!

For a replacement belt, try bearing boys: Transmissions | Bearing Boys are a leading UK transmission supplier

 

[Fastdruid]

Looks a very nice little lathe http://lathes.co.uk/grayson/

Looks like @skotl has got in there already with my go-to for belts! I'm not entirely sure they do flat belts though, try here: https://www.bearingsrus.co.uk/belts/flat-belt

WRT to the "cabinet" the ideal is as hefty as you possibly can get. To give you an idea, the cabinet _alone_ for my L5 I estimate weighs >200Kg....but that's a bit of a beast in comparison to yours which is more akin to the Myford.

You probably do want to bolt it down but if you do you undoubtedly want to shim it when you bolt it down if you bolt it down hard. There is a technique called Rollie's Dad's Method which is meant to be for measuring and shimming for bed twist.

http://manuals.chudov.com/Rollies-Dads-Method-of-Lathe-Alignment.pdf

Alternatively you can bolt down one end and leave the other "floating".

It's worth mentioning however that in reality unless you are doing very long stuff that it'll probably be "good enough" anyway. Particularly has you appear to have no micrometer dials anyway.

Certainly if you've never done any turning before it's really not going to matter if it's even quite worn and twisted. Get it working, make some swarf and learn. Once you've made some chips and got the basics you can worry about the accuracy of it.

 

[gaz1]

thats in nice condition

you need 2 bearings and some washers and drill holes in the bar

this will give you a bar to mount that those bearings onto from your motor

what else did you get with it ?

leave the belt as it as it works as intended too much to change now unless full strip down

so you can see the counter shaft

 

[Fastdruid]

TOT on lathe leveling

 

[Wedg1e]

My first two lathes ran joined flat belts; I bought some random poly-vee car drive belt that ran without the annoying tink-tink of the joint over the pulleys, only a few minutes work to pop the bearing caps off and lift the spindle out (the reverse assembly was held by two nuts I think).
Seem to remember that the poly-vee also had more grip on the pulleys as well where the old belt could slip, probably not a bad thing for a novice, come to think of it!

 

[MattF]

TOT on lathe leveling

Kept skipping through that, & found nowt useful. Must've missed it.

Simple thing to make sure you don't introduce twist in a bed:

Bolt the headstock end down. Chuck up a piece of rod, & mount a DTI on the saddle, & zero it on the rod. If there's any deflection whilst bolting the tailstock end down, you're introducing twist. Shim/pack to suit.

 

[Gas mark 5]

Ah, perfect, thanks for the advice everyone. Those methods of leveling make complete sense. Agreed it doesn't need to be super precise, but it would be good to start in the right sort of ballpark at least.

Those counter shaft examples are helpful, thanks @gaz1 . It came with a slightly bodged together setup, but probably perfectly serviceable. There was a break in the rain today, so I made a start on assembling the bench and working out how it will all fit together:






One more question before I start bolting everything together and cutting holes for belts though - is this motor happy being mounted upside down?





The only reason I ask is that I wondered if those were oiling points, and if they need to be on top to be effective? Or can I just give them a squirt every now and again? The motor was kindly donated by my boss, previously on an ML7 I believe.

Other than that, I think I have most of the important bits sorted, will get back to bracing the bench with whatever I have managed to liberate from skips over the years.

Thanks,

George

 

[gaz1]

oil points to side or top never below unless its a grease nipple

the one thing i do like is the myford and others for counter shaft disenguagement

 

[RichardM]

I would also put the drive belt on the other side so it will not get swarf on it.

Talking of drive belts,when you change speed with it like that will the motor belt be tighter?