There is little handier in a shop than a metal lathe. I probably use one 3 to 4 times per week and I am retired. In january while touring a friends shop and looking at his race cars I saw an old lathe sitting outsde in the snow. When i asked about it he told me it was an old turret lathe and he just got it for the DC motor it happened to have in as it was used in a remote shop. My friend John is into Windmills as well as drag racing and wanted to see if the motor would be ok for a Windmill as a generator. When I looked at the lathe isaw it was a dedicated device (turret lathe) and yet it was still a hi quality piece. (Saig Italy) When i asked how bad it would hurt to procure it John assured it wouldnt hurt at all and he would deliver it with his boom truck. (John runs a crane service and we have been friends since about 1969) He dropped it off a few days later and I began working at the conversion to a useable shop lathe. Mike of "Sietsma builds an old school Willys" pitched in a freed up all the stuck stuff and helped me remove the turret. Using the collet nut which was a wierd thread I had a local shop make a steel plate from 1/2 inch steel and bore a hole to match the hole in the collet nut which fits on the head stock. Using some spare tubing from my new FED project I pop a chunk in my mini lathe and made a press fit sleeve to centre the new plate firmly on the collet or tailstock nut. Using my newly learned tig skills I tigged the two together using of course my scratch tig set up. Mike donated a free motor he had from an old pump (Mike ran a pump repair business for many years) I had to buy a pulley since the shaft was a different size and short. I bought a Emergency Stop switch at Busy Bee machine supply as well as a four Jaw independant chuck. I am often asked to machine pistons and have not had a four jaw independant in years. I have made do but a 6 inch chuck for $99 was too good to pass by. Today I used the lathe to step cut the face plate so i could centre the chuck and mount it. It was the first time it ran on its own power. (never had a lathe of this quality before. ) Tomorrow I will mount the chuck and begin using it. So far i spent less that $200. Just goes to show one man's junk is another man's treasure. Here it is running just after facing the step in the face plate. I post it because I have before turned down these lathes because I thought they were unusable for conventional use. This seems a practical way to fix that. Many can not afford a expensive piece of eqiupment but could do a conversion like this and have a useable lathe for their hotrod projects. Sure no power feed , no thread cutting, but I rarely need those anyway. Don
Ran one of those back in '69-'70 making carbide heading dies in a aircraft screw factory...good machine...nice score.
I ran a Warner-Swazey in '65 making Coffie maker hold down bolts to be used on Douglas aircraft. Used a geometric thread cutter. Made thousands of them. Never knew why they needed so many.
I will make a tailstock. I have a dovetail that slides on but it is too long . It held the turret. I will cut a chunk off and use it for the base of the tailstock Some heavy metal will make the upright which will fasten to the dovetail. After that it is chuck an endmill in the chuck and slide the new tailstock into the fray. Perfect alignment the easy way. I will probably though once I have the chuck mounted use it a lot with just the chuck. It was my goal for this week to get it functional. Don PS I have a flash. The camera doesnt always work well. Sometimes perfect sometimes not.
Hey Don...thats great, use that old equipment, some of that stuff is better than the new equipment. just so happens that I also have an old turret sitting outside and its free to anyone who comes and picks it up.....Good luck.....Mike
Nice seeing scrap turned into tools. I've only read a few of your posts, but I already know I'd enjoy hanging out in your shop!
One of the things that surprised me was after pressing the sleeve into the collet nut and tig welding it I mounted it on the tailstock and checked it with a dial indicator. It seemed to good I thought my glasses had fogged over but when i got the lathe running and reset the tool bit to true it it was already true. I know if i had arc welded it it would have been as crooked as a snake. I was pleasantly surprised. Today I will find out how the chuck mounting goes. Don Hope someone gets that one. i will give details on the conversion if anyone needs it. If it is North American you can buy a face plate with the thread in it to fit. This one i could not or at least my suppliers did not have this particular thread. This type of lathe when done is great for quick work where you need to make a part in a hurry. (90% of the time!)
Project complete and successful. I chucked a piece of steel in the chuck. Centred it (four jaw remember) and hit the power. Man will this thing chew off a chunk! In two minutes did what would have taken 30 to 40 minutes in the mini lathe. I am impressed and happy. Total cost was less than $200. I took a photo of the new stop switch too. I like this type as you dont have to hunt for it. Some lazy day i will start making a tailstock for it. It is a pretty stout piece of equipment.
Spend some time today machining a smple stub axle for my FED project from a 1 inch bolt. it take ittle time with this unit to peel it to the size you want. I also started shortenng the turrert section to make a tailstock assembly. Don
I have none. When i wrote for Chrysler Power Magazine in the 90s the publisher Roland Osborne told me he liked my writing but I was the worst photographer he had ever seen. He said just make your photos and i will redo them on similar parts in my shop. Another publisher I worked for once asked me if I used glasses to read. I replied to the positive. He then said in a loud voice "Well try putting the darn things on when you take photos!" I thought though the last two i just took were pretty good. Shows you what i know! I am severely colour blind which certainly doesnt help. Don
We were speaking of tailstocks. In the night I had a moment of inspiration. Why reinvent the wheel I thought. you have a tailstock already set up for this lathe , it is just too long to allow decent travel of the bed. Since I dont need the auto rotation and auto depth in the almost two foot long turret I chopped it off and ground the open end smooth. I still have the multiple turret function but it is now manual and is also normal size like a normal lathe would be. Other than a small openng in the far end which will be closed up it looks pretty good. Don
In heavily industrialized parts of the country there are thousands of pieces of equipment like that just laying around. A lot of it is specialized just like that turret lathe. Since our industrial base is deteriorating a lot of this stuff is going for scrap. Checking the scrap yards might prove fruitful if your looking for a similar project. Frank
That is true~ I had been offered these before but was probably too busy to think about a conversion. It actually works very well and is a real good piece for quick work. Instead of positive screw feeds it uses set stops and the tool bit can be swung in and out in a millisecond I actually like that function. I dont lose my setting but I can move the tool bit away for measuring and fitting. As for the tailstock I figure I need a feed method for drilling holes etc. I have decided to tow it with the cross slide . I will make a bar the swing up and locks the two together and use the crank to move them both since the turret is already designed to work over the slide. If I need something beyond I can go to my mini lathe with coventional feeds but so far I find this easy and quick to use. If it was the only lathe I had I would be ok with that. I have a couple more ideas to improve it and will try them and post if they are successful. This machine does not grunt when working. It chews of ribbons of steel easily. And yet when i want to trim just a wisker it does that too. Maybe it is not the perfect machine but it sure is practical !Thanks to John Morton of Mortons Crane Service who gave it to me. Don
Cool. Man I need a lathe bad. Anyone in the ST.Louis area want to help a brother out? ha,ha Nice post.
Looks like the lathe isn't the only old iron you own, I spy a Kerney Trecker mill also. I wish I had the space to bring home every BIG orphan tool I've run across over the years.
There are many boards dedicated to older machining rebuilds, kinda like HAMB for machinists. Friend at work is doing a woodworking shop and buying 3 phase equipment for nothing, no one wants to mess with it, he is just converting the motors over to 220 or a phase converter. hobby cabinet making shop using production equipment from the 50-60's and spending very little $.
Looks like the lathe isn't the only old iron you own, I spy a Kerney Trecker mill also. I wish I had the space to bring home every BIG orphan tool I've run across over the years. Ah yes you do! A 2H. That is another story. I was helping my friend Mike Sietsma adapt a volare overdrive 4 speed to his early hemi. I said we need to make an adapter. He reminded me i had sold my mill drill lathe when i sold my machne shop stuff. I told him we would make a model and find someone to machine it. He told me there was a Mill up the road accross from my place. I denied it but he said come with me and took me to a neighbour he sometimes does plumbing work for who sells the outdoor furances. There in his shop stood this monster complete with a new machinst vise (about a 60 pound model) a 15 tooth 10 inch cutter. A complete set of collets and holder and a brand new 220 single phase motor inside, new belts and all. I was almost afraid to ask but I did figuring it would be $2000 to $4000. The guy said "i dont even know what it is. I took it in on trade in a stove deal . I need $500." And so that is how it got here. I almost broke my arm getting some money out of my pocket to pay him. We made the adapter for Mikes trans on that mill. Don Re the machinsts hamb style board I have been there as well but I am really an automotive machinst by trade. The general stuff I just do because I get tired of hearing how it cant be done. It is not a great skill of mine. It is out of self defense. Re King Now someone must have an old turret lathe sitting outside for KingChassis. Surely. You know he would put it to good use!
the spindle modification you did to the lathe (adding the flange) was to accommodate using the newer "camlock" chucks?
No. The lathe was made with no face plate. only a collet nut just the same as one would have on a collet spindle in a mill. Using the collet nut as a true surface i made a face plate from 1/2 inch steel. (Local shop machned it for me in thier big lathe as my mini was too smalll to handle it) I had the hole in the centre bored exactly the same size as the hole in the collet nut. I made a sleeve from 1 1/4 DOM 120 wall tubing for a .002" interference fit then pressed the nut and the flange together on the sleeve. I tig welded the sleeve to the centre of the 1/2 inch steel face plate i had made just by tigging the joint where the sleeve came through the face plate (basically just a melt, no filler rod required. I then using filler welded the back of the face plate in four or five places to the collet nut so it would drive it safely. For some reason probably because i tigged it it didnt warp at all but that might just be luck. The four jaw independant chuck I bought new ($99 BUSY BEE, Brock road ,Pickering ,Ont ) Had a step or register on the onside outer edge of apporx 5 inch dia and 1/2inch wide. I forget the exact measurement as I used my Dial Caliphers. Using the lathe itself i fired it up and with its own tool bit cut the receiving step on my newly made face plate. I had to be very careful because it had to be exact. Every cut takes of double because you are cutting the radius so just a whisker at a time and stop and trial fit was how I did it. Finally it went on with a slight push and fit flush. I removed the face plate(unscewed the whole deal using its collet nut function and drilled the holes for the four attaching screws. For me the holes wound up being through to the outside edge of the face plate. (There is a reason for that that I will explain later) I then mounted the chuck and torqued the screws. Screwed the whole deal back on the big splindle thread and started machining. A coule of notes. While the chuck is accurate as far as jaws go, its oustide edge is not as machined but is polished so dont use that surface for dial indicating because it is not accurate. It is polished to make it pretty only. A better chuck would be accurate here as well I believe. If you can fnd a turret lathe with a standard Thread on the spindle a machine shop supplier can supply a face pate with that thread . Mine is an oddball thread for here So i had to do the make my own face plate thing. Probably had I been more persisitant I could have bought one but i like doing things like this so it was no big deal to me. When doing stuff like this the trick is to remember if it doesnt work you are only out maybe $20 at best. When it does work you just saved about $150 and had fun(and learned something besides.) Now about the chuck. When i began making the face plate i first went and looked at the chucks that were on sale. I did not buy one till the face plate was made and checked true. The display chuck while the same size bolded to a 4 inch circle about the middle of the face plate . When I got the new chuck home out of the box it was not exactly the same as the one on display and bolted at the outside edge. Since the step positions it and not the bolts I was ok with them being that close to the outside edge even though maybe would rather not see them. Cest la vie! I hope this helps explain the proceedure. The chuck is just a "cheap" Chinese four jaw independant chuck. Still it does exactly what i wanted it to do. Don Before the lathe had only a collet function for parts under 1 inch diameter. It had no chuck per say. Just a collet. Other than for small shafts or bushings it was about useless.
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