My New Addition To My Shop, A 15" Sheldon Lathe

[4GSR]

Well I bought another project lathe for the shop.  It's a 15" x 42" Sheldon lathe.  About a 1961-62 born lathe.  It's the early R series lathe Sheldon came out with back then. Later replaced with the Newer R series lathes that had both a lead screw and separate feed rod.  The early R series lathes only had one leadscrew/feed rod combined into one. It came with a collet attachment and junked out KDK tool post which I threw out.  It's not worth salvaging, it's too far gone.  Here's a few pictures with more to come.

[RayH]

Congrats on the new project Ken.

I'm a KDK guy. If you've got any usable holders to sell, let me know.

[4GSR]

Ray,

Unfortunally, there were no extra holders with the lathe.

Sorry,

Ken

[kvt85]

where did you pic that one up at.   And where is it going to fit in the shop,   It was still kind of full the last time I was there.

Ken

[4GSR]

where did you pic that one up at.   And where is it going to fit in the shop,   It was still kind of full the last time I was there.

Ken

Hahaha...

I'm making room for it.  The tool grinder left for a new home.  The vertical band saw went in it's place.  You need a granite plate by chance???  The jib crane is being removed this weekend.  I lost a little weight so that will give me room to maneuver around.....

I bought it up in Ft. Worth and picked it up there in S.A. at one of the shipping depots.  Had to take it to Pleasanton to rearrange the load for the trip to Victoria. Lots of fun...

[kvt85]

Why did you not holler at me and let me know.   I would have to do like you and move things out  to put a surface plate in.   Like move the Air compressor out and the 20 ton press out.  etc. 

But you need the plate to do the rebuild and scraping

[4GSR]

Why did you not holler at me and let me know.   I would have to do like you and move things out  to put a surface plate in.   Like move the Air compressor out and the 20 ton press out.  etc. 

But you need the plate to do the rebuild and scraping

I have two 18 x 24 surface plates..... really only need one.

[4GSR]

Haven't given an update for a while on my new lathe rebuild.

It's moved into the garage and got a coat of paint on it after using a needle scaler to remove most of the old paint.  Used a bunch of Scotch Brite pads on my M12 right angle grinder to smooth out most of the roughness before paint.  The last picture, I'm not going to talkie about until I see if it's going to work or not.

More to come....

[chips and more]

Are you gonna try to do something to the ways? You have more balls than I.

[Carpenter84]

Wow, you took the whole gear head off. Ya, I'd say that's balls in my books. I remember you way grinding video from like 2003 or something. I'll be curious to see what you do with the bed ways.

[4GSR]

Been a while since I've been on and posted anything. 

I did grind the bed with somewhat satisfying results.  I sometimes want to question the accuracy of grinding that Sheldon did on this bed originally.  I found some strange not so straight grinding/planning on the bed that gave me heck trying to align my grinding fixture.  Plus the accuracy of the linear ways I used was not so great. I was able to grind things fairly straight and parallel to other unworn surfaces.  Up and down not so great.   Time will tell.
 

[4GSR]

Rebuilt the quick change gear box and reinstalled.  Put in all new needle and ball bearings.  Also had to replace a bad gear on one of the selectors.

[4GSR]

Installed a new motor and wired up a VFD to the lathe.

[4GSR]

Here's some repair work I'm doing to the apron of this lathe.

[4GSR]

Here's the replacement gears for the gear train from the headstock to the quick change gear box.  The original Micarta gears apparently were destroyed from a wreck the lathe was in.  There's stuff in the apron that was half assed repaired that I'm correcting to make it as good as I can get it.