Turned it on and made my first chips on my SB 9C yesterday. Grabbed a small piece of tubing and faced it off then made a couple passes on the OD. Next tried out the new parting tool and cut a 1/8" wide ring from the 3/8" dia. tube. It actually all worked. I made a few adjustments like making a shim out of some .005 shim stock and shimmed the cross slide screw. Tightened up the backlash considerably. My Son came up today and I introduced him to the fun/fine art of machining. He took a chunk of 3/4" dia. bar, faced it off, attempted to turn it down to a .600 dia. (he actually got it within .001), then I showed him how a knurling tool worked. I then took over and sliced an 1/8" thick "coin" off for him with the parting tool. He was impressed and said it looked like a lot of fun and could probably dream up a couple little projects. I'm hoping he'll get interested enough to actually come by and learn to use it often.
I still need to turn a backing plate for the 4 jaw I got off e-bay, especially since the 3 jaw I have looks like it's off by quite a bit. This is where I have a question. The threaded backing plate I bought does not screw on past the last thread on the spindle. I measured the OD of the short unthreaded register area behind the thread and the ID of the backing plate is probably .010 smaller than the spindle registers OD. I also measured the old 3 jaw that came with the lathe and it measures about the same. Shouldn't the plate thread all the way onto this register up to and against the "flange" of the spindle and is this maybe why the 3 jaw's runout is off so far? And if it should how close of a fit should it be?
I still need to turn a backing plate for the 4 jaw I got off e-bay, especially since the 3 jaw I have looks like it's off by quite a bit. This is where I have a question. The threaded backing plate I bought does not screw on past the last thread on the spindle. I measured the OD of the short unthreaded register area behind the thread and the ID of the backing plate is probably .010 smaller than the spindle registers OD. I also measured the old 3 jaw that came with the lathe and it measures about the same. Shouldn't the plate thread all the way onto this register up to and against the "flange" of the spindle and is this maybe why the 3 jaw's runout is off so far? And if it should how close of a fit should it be?
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