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

[4GSR]

Highly unlikely to find a worm tap or hob without paying to get one made.  And they do make them, at least they used to.  I would make one but I have no way to cut that weird pitch on my lathes.  I guess I could send it to Keith at Vintage Machinery and let him cut one on his horizontal mill???  That's used to be one way they blanked them out before they were harden and put on special grinders to finish grind and grind the back relief on them.

[ddickey]

Haven't posted in a while.  Here's some pics on the cross-slide and gib scraping. Boy, I sure like scraping Turcite! It is so easy and quick! The last few passes on scraping I pull scrape for final results.   The gib has a patch I had to add.  I mistakenly placed the Turcite in the wrong position leaving a place about a 1/2" long which a piece was patched in. It all scraped in and looks good.

Are you going to put oil grooves on the cross slide?

[4GSR]

..............
Are you going to put oil grooves on the cross slide?

Yes. I haven't got to that point of doing so.  I have the cross slide drilled and tapped for oil cups, just need to cross drill the holes to the bottom and add grooves.  I'm getting there, SLOWLY!!!!

Thanks for asking.

[PJB]

That’s some impressive work!   I could envision trying a spur gear but would never think to try and make a worm gear. 


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[Carpenter84]

Certainly beyond my current knowledge level!

[4GSR]

I had to do some relief grinding on that gear to get the worm to mesh a little deeper.
It's starting to look like a lathe now.  Mounted the apron and leadscrew for alignment purposes.  The leadscrew aligned perfectly.  The rack pinion gear is tight mesh with the rack on the bed. I have two options here I can do.  One is surface grind about .005-.008" off the back side of the gear rack to raise the rack up.  Two, put a .005" shim between the apron and the saddle.  I may put the shim in there for now.  The only con doing this is it will put more slop in the gear that drives the cross feed screw.  Next step is the break down everything and work on the oiling system I want to install on the carriage. 

[kvt85]

I was going to say the Shim as that would let it wear in for adjustment, and you could go back later and grind it some if still needed. But had not thought about the slop in the cross feed.     But it is looking nice.   

[4GSR]

Finally have most of the oiling system installed on the carriage.  The hand pump I bought is a right-hand operated unit.  It will not work with my setup.  I ordered a left-hand unit that will be here in a week or so.

Pictures are showing the areas I had to cut out for the oil line passages. The oil lines installed.  There's also a picture of the Bijur lubricating stuff I work with and used for this installation.  Most of this stuff was left over from my dad's days of doing machine repairing back in the 1970's.  I've bought a few things over the years, mostly metering units I didn't have here.

I had my first war injury with the lathe.  I had removed the feed plate from the quick-change gear box and was loose on top of the gear box.  I accidently knocked it off while rotating the lead screw and it stabbed me in the leg. 
I'm working on the way wipers, not way wipes!!!, next.

[4GSR]

Some more pictures to show off.  I'm pretty much done with the lathe except for the tailstock and installing the digital readout.  Sometime later, I have the collet attachment to fix up and a steady rest to build for the lathe.  I think I'll put a price tag of $10,000 for mine after seeing the PJB posted.

Here is the before and after picture of the lathe after rebuilding.  The final piece of the puzzle tells me that this lathe was wrecked sometime in its earlier years of service.  A hacked job of repairing the wrecked lathe made it limited to what it could do over the years.  As nasty and dirty as the lathe was when received, it also tells me it sat in the corner of a shop for a number of years of not been used.

I still have a few minor things I have to go back and try to fix which is related to the wreck.  One is removing the quick-change gear box from the lathe and attending to a few of the gears.  As in making replacements. 

[Carpenter84]

Looks can be deceiving. I would have never guessed from the sale photos you sent me that you drug home a boat anchor. But man, I've told you before, I'll say it again - you do good work. And I don't care what you complain - you love the journey. Your passion shows. I just gotta get you to rebuild mine....

[kvt85]

Looking good,
 Looks like you rearranged a little since the last time I was in that shop.

[4GSR]

Shawn, I'll send you the Biax scraper and the straight edges and I'll supervise from my armchair.

[Carpenter84]

Careful…. I just may accept the offer.