i just bought this and need some parts & advise. any pearls of wisdom i should know? need a tailstock & some covers, see anything else i don't have? i do have the motor and pulley to drive it, forgot to get a pic.
Great little lathe! There could be a lot of parts and tooling you will need depending on what you want to do with it. I wouldn't get too spun up about the parts, as you don't know how well it works yet. I would get it cleaned up, set up, and see how the bearings and bed are. If everything works, then you have a great lathe to do small stuff and learn on. Most likely you will have a good working lathe that has a worn bed and some play in pretty much everything else. Good enough for a lot of projects. Just get some Aluminum, do some reading/youtubing and make some chips. Machinery's Handbook is a good higher end reference, or if you can find a good old textbook from shop class it will help get started. I recommend finding some aluminum bar stock around 1.5" dia cut to 4-5 inch lengths or so to start with. mrpete222 on Youtube is a great reference as well for anything old school machining related. The guy is a retired shop teacher and does a good job. I have a similar south bend from 1936 and I make spacers, bushings, tubing inserts to butt weld tube, and kludge customize fasteners on it. PS. I would recommend learning what crashing a lathe is and think about safety. That lathe is strong enough to seriously maim you if you get something caught in it or get a digit between the spinny parts and the non spinny parts. Don't feed the tools or the rest/saddle into the chuck.
thanks for the tips. i've been spending time on YouTube and my good friend is a retired shop teacher and will show me the basics.
First, buy this book: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...bend+lathe+handbook&_sacat=267&LH_TitleDesc=0 and buy a taper attachment that attaches to the cross slide and rides on the rear "ways" of the lathe. When you buy any parts like this or a tail stock be sure that your get the adjusting "gibbs" also as they often get lost. Buy a live center for the tailstock, not a dead center. Looks like you need the leather belt to drive the spindle. Peruse here: https://www.google.com/search?q=sou.....69i57j0l5.5192j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Since metal shops are closing in most high schools go on the public auction or school district auction website in your area and look for attachments or tooling for your lathe. Your lathe's compound rest doesn't have "mashed up" corners so there's a good chance it's in good shape. Look here: https://www.google.com/search?q=pub...rome..69i57.9433j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Your complete lathe should look very much like this one with major attachments. http://www.ezsystems.com/p/SOUTH-BE...MI74CilJ_M3QIVhEpeCh0vTQFdEAQYBCABEgL_JvD_BwE Here's an auction lathe showing the taper attachment. $500 is a great buy. Looks like it was hardley used. https://www.publicsurplus.com/sms/auction/view?auc=2183665
sale coming up this Fri. is supposed to have more stuff from the estate i got the lathe from. shop teacher friend is coming to steer me in the right direction. here's a few more pics. I'll check out that book, thanks Fordy
South Bend 9" lathes would have to be among the most copied in the world. There are at least 4 clones here in Australia with the most notable being Hercus who actually sent lathes back to the US and Canada. Many of those parts interchange though postage may make the costs prohibitive. Yours is a Model A which has power feed and power cross feed. 4 1/2' is the longer bed and that's a plus. Have a look at the slides and the lead screw near the chuck and compare to the end furthest from the chuck to see how much wear /use it's had. There are any number of excellent forums and here's one example that discusses your model. https://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/south-bend-lathes/644r-12-speed-187357/ . Look online for two PDFs, one is the "Hercus Textbook of Turning" and the other is the "South Bend Army Lathe" operation, setup and repair manual. If you can not find one or both, message me with your email address and I will email them to you. They will both prove invaluable resources. Cheers, Rob
Hi, just joined the forum and found your thread. There's a South bend lathe Yahoo group where you can get parts and tech info. It's a pain because the messages come in through email, but theres nothing you'll need that can't be had through them. I have it set up with a dedicated Yahoo mail account to keep all of it out if my regular mail. Cool lathe, BTW. I have a 1928 South bend 9"junior
These old South Bend lathes have become pretty collectable. The good news is parts are often available on ebay. The bad news is that many people part out machine as they make more money than people who save them, and the prices of parts are being driven through the roof. The other good news is you can make many of the parts yourself on the lathe, but often need another lathe to do so if something is broken. They're great little lathes within their own realm, I consider the 9" South Bend to be about the entry level lathe for anyone wanting to do machine work. Have you figured out how old it is? I have a South Bend 9" lathe that came out of the Levi Strauss factory in San Fransisco when they closed it down in the late 90s. This was purchased April 12, 1946 just several months after the war ended. It still has a Levi Strauss inventory tag on the gearbox. I also have another 10L, or what is referred to as a "Heavy 10", it's in parts and I will refurbish it back to working order when I have time. I mainly use a much more capable lathe in my shop, but the South Bends are fun to work on, fun to make parts for, and just good little lathes within their realm. They are capable of doing work that is accurate to .001", which is pretty much all anyone needs in a home shop. FWIW, I don't recommend buying the restoration book by ILION, in fact I would just try to get it working and making chips before you do anything. Many people take these lathes apart with intentions of rebuilding them and then leave them in pieces. It takes a bit of tenacity to get these lathes all back together and working correctly. Get the parts you need to make it work and do just that, make it work. I would download this "How To Run A Lathe" book from Vintage Machinery and start reading it if you haven't. http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/1617/3789.pdf
That is pretty much the recommended text for people new to lathes. There is so much to operating a lathe, having proper measuring tools, knowing how to setup a lathe for the work you need done, having the proper chucks, a quick change tool post, etc...as a start just fill the cups with oil and make sure everything is lubed well. If you want to use the proper oil, you can get a starter pack here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ABC-Lite-I...outh-Bend-Lathe-Recommended-Oils/221943866772 Try to stick with the basics, start turning some metal, make some simple parts will be gratifying. Stick with HSS blanks that you can grind yourself, it is better suited for a small South Bend 9". Many people get carried away with wanting carbide tooling, I recommend staying away from it and sticking with HSS so you can learn how to properly grind tools that you can use. Learn how to grind a tool, once you can grind an HSS you can grind a shape for most anything. Lots of info on YouTube about grinding. MrPete22 would be a good channel for you to follow, he targets home shop machinists like you. He was a shop teacher and now retired. He has a good video for grinding for beginners, here:
I worked in a machine shop back in the seventies, walking in not knowing anything and worked my way up to rework and piece work in 18 months. My bosses told me “ feed and speed” boy! That the important things in machining. They also told me machining is easy..... all you have to do is.....remove all the metal that is not part of the part! Nothing to it! Bones
Indeed, if you have your feeds and speeds correctly set for the work you're doing, it's only a matter of time to cut the material off you need taken away. This holds true for small tiny parts or huge heavy parts that you need a chain fall to lift. There's an art to being able to quickly calculate surface feet per minute. Most anyone can do it with a bit of research. South Bend lathes are pretty forgiving. They use a flat belt on the majority of them so the belt will slip if you get too much force at the tool. Other larger machines could break stuff quick. My main lathe is a 5HP with 2 sets of triple v-belts...there is no forgiving on this type of setup, if something goes wrong it's either your part or the tool that goes to #E!! in a hand basket quick. Can't argue with fact.
I got a 19 inch by 84 LeBlond in my shop , a 10 inch Clausing, and am working on a smaller Atlas., along with a Radial arm drill, and an Index milling machine and a couple of others machines..... all just sitting there. Don’t have the motivation to mess with them anymore. When I retired..... I retired!
I bought most of my machines with a purpose...it started out as woodworking machines as I am building a log home. This is a huge project in itself, which I won't go into...but in buying old woodworking machines I found the need to fix them so needed metalworking machines...I now have an amazing selection of both woodworking and metalworking machines, many of them waiting for the new shop when the foundation is poured for my log home (just got my building permit a couple months ago). My plan is setting up the shop in the walkout basement to build the home. This is my plans for retirement, I plan to leave this home I build with my hand to my kids, debt free. My property is in Buckingham Park, up at Clear Lake and has 90 feet of lakefront. That LeBlond sounds like a nice lathe, and those Clausings aren't bad at all...even the small Atlas lathes are fairly capable. For auto work a metal lathe and milling machine are indispensable.
Great lathe. Had a 9" and 16". None better. Get on/join Practical Machinist.... great site, lots of South Benders.[emoji111] Sent from my XT1710-02 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
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