South Bend 16" Lathe Restoration. Another one of Toyman's not car builds.

In reply to Toyman01 (Forum Supporter) :

Oooh, I've got the book, but frequently get lost. The pages of 300 parts are TOO detailed to be useful to my lizard brain. I'll watch that today. Your builds are always educational. I appreciate that.

I struggled with school in junior high and in my freshman fall year in HS I took Metals 1 and I came alive.   The lathe is one of the first machines I learned as a 14 year old and I've loved every bit of it.  
 

One of my customers (rock quarries) has a repair facility near Joliet, IL and the lathe they have for rebuilding cranes is impressive.  Someday I'll get a picture for you'all.  

Sweet! You made out on that bad boy. I gave almost double for my SB 9. 1957 vintage. 

This thing showed up Saturday. This lathe has a 1.5 hp 3 phase motor. Needless to say, I don't have 3 phase power at the house. This little box is a Variable Frequency Drive. It will take single phase 240v power and through the magic of electronics, convert it to 3 phase 240v. It should also give me variable speeds so some extent. Much more convenient than a rotary phase converter, not to mention much cheaper. 

Also the trolley arrived. It works a little better than a chain wrapped around the beam. 

And amazingly enough the car still fits in the shop.

Toyman01 (Forum Supporter) said:

Patrick (Forum Supporter) said:

The0retical (Forum Supporter) said:

Damn... How do you guys find such good deals on these things?

Every time I find a lathe for sale the seller always wants challenge pricing+ on it. Obviously someone is paying it too because they never last very long out by me.

I found mine on letgo at a farm where grandpa passed away and grandson was selling everything because they sold the farm.  It went from 900 to 700 to 550 and i ended up loading it on the trailer for $320.  

Another thing to consider with old lathes, the bigger they are the cheaper they are. A production shop isn't going to want a 70 year old belt drive lathe. It's too slow and too worn. A hobbyist isn't going to want a 16" lathe. It's too big and take up too much space in their garage and most people have no way to move it. The smaller lathes frequently go for pretty big money. 

You are exactly right about big large little cost formula. On the other hand older little lathes tend to wind up in the shop with little use because every machinist I know develops favorites. Older lathes tend to mean sloppy work ( Because they are worn) 

That's where I find my good deals. Smaller odd job shops usually have something stashed in a corner or back room.  
It seems like machinists know they can fix something so they refuse to scrap it  and it sits there getting dusty and dirty with junk piled on top. 
Know what you're willing to pay, what a fair price is and next time you're having work done look around and make an offer.  

In reply to Toyman01 (Forum Supporter) :

I'm not sure today's people understand how most of us older guys learned things.  We would go to a machine shop and ask to have a project done. Then while we waited we'd watch the machinist. Figure out what he was doing and well,  that's it. 
monkey see monkey do. 

Zero progress this weekend. I'm waiting on a paint order since the local stores are out and don't know when they will get shipments. 

I did get the rebuild kit. This lathe has no roller or ball bearings. Everything is cast iron or bronze bushings. They need a constant supply of oil to keep things smooth. That oil is supplied by oil cups and felt wicks. What's in there now is probably 70 years old. They are choked with old oil and falling apart. The rebuild kit comes with replacements for all of those wicks and wipers. 

It also comes with a rebuild book. 

More to come. Hopefull the paint will be in this week. 

The paint showed up today so I spent a couple of hours working on the lathe. The painted parts for the taper attachment have been stripped, masked, and sprayed with a self etching primer. It appears that someone in the past has painted this thing with a brush. The paint is super thick, but surprisingly soft. An assortment of wire wheels is doing a nice job of stripping the paint.

A lot of the small parts made a trip through the wire wheel on the bench grinder. It does a pretty decent job of stripping the rust.

More to come. 

All my hoist supplies showed up today. I spent some time getting it mounted. It will let me pull the heavy parts without killing my back or smashing my hands. I can lift them off the lathe and set them on the rolling bench I'm using as a work surface. I've smashed my fingers swapping the chuck on the 9" lathe. I can imagine what 50-60 pounds of steel would do to my hand. 

Today I got some of the carriage pulled apart and pulled the chuck. I didn't take many pictures, sorry. 

I should be able to put in a full day tomorrow. 

More to come. 

The first machine I will get when I have a dedicated shop, will be a lathe. I've since learned from a close friend who runs a shop making parts, that he actually pays taxes on each of his pieces of heavy-machinery (the lathe and two mills) each year! I've chalked that up to being a tax levied on him because he uses them for the business, but man I can't help but feel that's a bit ridiculous!

Definitely following this resto, and opening up my eyes furrther for similar deals. Even if I can't bring it home, I do have a place to store a lathe until I get a place of my own for it.

Time for a update. I've managed to put several hours into this over the last few days. 

Carriage and apron removed. It's a heavy SOB. The carriage is what moves your tools up and down the bed. The apron hangs from it and carries all the gears and clutches to drive the power feeds. 

Then I separated them. This is the back of the apron. The lead screw off the gear box drives all of this through a keyed worm gear. 

Here, I got my first piece of bad news. 

If you look on the left side of the below apron you will see the half nuts. There is actually two of them to make a full nut.  Unfortunately, this is not my apron. 

This is. Notice the bottom half of the half nut set it missing. 

To go along with that, the keeper is broken and two of the bolts are sheared off in the apron casting. The good news is I found the parts to fix it. The bad news is with taxes and freight, they cost more than I paid for the lathe.

The next step was the gear drive for the transmission. These gears take power from the spindle, through a set of forward/reverse tumblers, and drive the transmission, that drives the lead screw, that drives the apron. All of this is what makes it possible for the lathe to have power feeds and cut treads. They are a disgusting mess. Someone has been slopping grease on them instead of oil. The top gear is the spindle. The next three are the forward/reverse tumbler. The next big gear transfers power to the final gear on the transmission input shaft. By flipping the two double gears and sliding the center big gear to re-mesh everything, there are twice as many ratios available. 

The parts are cleaning up pretty well, but this stuff is a pain to clean up even with a parts washer. 

 Nest up was pulling the spindle. This is another heavy part. Caps were pulled and set aside with their respective shims. 

Then the spindle lifts out with the huge brass bushings. From left to right on the spindle shaft. Transmission drive gear. Backlash adjuster. Small end bushing. Thrust bearing assembly. Cone pulley gear and cone pulley. Bull gear. Spindle bearing surface. And to the right sitting on the rag, the big end bearing. 

The leather belt is just that. The drive belt. It is made out of leather. If you look just below the pulley, you can see where it is glued together. Unfortunately, I had to cut this one to get the spindle out. The 4 step pulley gives it 4 speeds in direct drive, 470, 280, 175, and 105 rpm. The cone pulley can also be disconnected from the spindle and through the gear on the pulley, drive the back gears. That shaft drives then the bull gear on the spindle to give it 4 more speeds, 60, 35, 22, and 15 rpm. 

These are the two wicks that supply oil to the spindle bearing. They are one of the reasons I'm tearing down the machine. I'm not convinced the PO wasn't using old motor oil to lube it. 

This is the back gear shaft assembly, which was removed next. 

The last thing removed this weekend was the transmission. 

It is every bit as nasty as I was afraid it would be. Input shaft is bottom left. The lead screw is bottom right. 

It does look like these parts will clean up well. I cleaned the lead screw and output gear today. The layer of goo did a pretty good job of keeping the rust at bay.

This is where things stand now. 

I'll lift the headstock off next. I'm debating leaving the bed and base together and painting them as one piece. The problem being the motor in in the base. I'd like to service it as well. 

More to come. 

Me, in my suburban 3/2, one car garage already full with a disassembled challenge car.

In reply to Toyman01 (Forum Supporter) :

Good idea on the chuck. My 9 inch has gotten me before. 

My old lathe was a 16" that had a 4" spacer put in by Southbend when it was new.  It would swing a 24" face plate. I changed it from the 3 jaw to the face plate exactly once without my engine hoist.  I'm digging the gantry, it looks like it could be one of those tools that you don't know how you got along without one.

Toyman01 (Forum Supporter) said:

Sitting on the chip tray was a wood case. The lid was being used to protect the ways under the chuck. After doing some digging, I have no clue what this is. They are magnetic, but they are weak magnets. Any ideas?

I finally figured out what these are. This is a magnet set for a Ford Model T magneto. They mount on the flywheel of all things. 

Learn something new every day. 

I've been pretty slack about keeping this thread up to date. Most of the progress is cleaning parts, which seems to be never ending and not very exciting. If you have see one gear go from black and nasty to clean and shiny, you've seen all of them. There are lots of these piles in boxes around the shop now. This particular pile is the apron transmission. Shooting pictures while cleaning is a pain, I'll try to do a better job when things start going back together and I'm not up to my elbows in the blackest goo you can imagine.

I did get some nickle plating done for parts that don't get paint that I don't want to rust. When I refrubished my 9" lathe, I painted these parts.  I think the nickle looks better.

I also got the 3 jaw chuck torn down and cleaned. It got a bath in Evaporust. 

The good news is, even though it looked pretty bad on the outside, the inside shows very little wear. Once it was back together it works as good as new. 

Interesting side note. It's made by the Cushman Chuck Co. in Hartford Ct. They are still in business and still making lathe chucks. 

I also spent some time with the motor and the VFD. The motor hasn't run in years. I debated pulling the entire drive apart but figured I would at least test it first. Good news, it runs flawlessly. The VFD is pretty amazing and completely programmable. 

At this point, I don't think I'm going to pull the bed off the base. I'm going to clean them up and paint them as a unit. The bed alone probably weighs close to 800 pounds and I don't want to have to fight it by itself. 

More to come as things happen. 

Great to see that coming along. 

I was starting to dislike this project because I figured I would never need a lathe this big. Work on the Lemons car and the Shamrock boat pushed it to the back burner and it's been languishing is parts for a couple of months.

This afternoon I had to put it back together enough to use it while building the driveshaft for the Lemons car. I guess a big lathe is worth it after all. So it's back on the list, it might be winter before it gets done though. 

It's not quite long enough, but with enough time, a steady rest, a Starrett level and a dial indicator, it's going to get the job done. 

Haven't even finished it and you have outgrown it