Questions About My New/old Lathe.

I received my Craftsman independent 4-jaw chuck last night. Not nearly as heavy as the one I bought from Little Machine Shop for my 7" x 12" mini-lathe (Matt you were correct sir. Not very robust but it should handle what I need).

The one I just received had some dried brown grease on it and some barely moist reddish packing grease. No visible signs of wear. I think it was in the original box with the key in 2 parts for packing. It has some cardboard fibers on it but absolutely no swarf. I think it's NOS. Unless it has some sort of manufacturing defect it should be in perfect condition. The pictures I posted don't do it justice. The dried grease makes it look dirty but it will clean up fine.

So now I have the Craftsman 3-jaw scroll chuck that needs some work, the Craftsman independent 4-jaw chuck I just received, an Atlas face plate, some centers, and some dogs.
 
Speaking of centers, when I bought my lathe a variety of centers and sleeves were included. Some fit and some don't. I don't see any markings on the centers. Is the headstock a #2 Morse taper and the tailstock a #1 Morse taper?
 
On an Atlas built 6", yes.
 
I hope I'm not boring you guys as I keep track of things here and ask newbie questions.

Today I cleaned the tail stock and reassembled it. It's working very smoothly now. Nice!

I have to disassemble the carriage assembly, clean it, and reassemble it. I also need to finish the counter shaft. Then I can begin mounting everything to the workbench. I have a 3 day weekend coming up and for 2 of those days I'll be the only human here. I'll have to tend to the chickens, dogs, and cats but I should get the carriage assembly completed and maybe get some work done on the counter shaft.

Can't wait to get everything mounted to the workbench. Then I'll have some adjusting to do but I'm thinking this is a very good lathe that looked horrible when I bought it and just needed a good cleaning, a few parts replaced, and some TLC.

I've learned that is the nice thing about these. Parts may not be dirt cheap but nearly everything is replaceable. Do some of you guys restore (not sure that's the right term) these things all the time? I can see becoming addicted.
 
I cleaned up the new-to-me independent 4-jaw chuck. The little chunks of dried out grease came off nicely. The only thing that is close to unsightly is the grease staining on the metal. Maybe some polishing would get rid of that but why bother? :)

The 3-jaw scroll chuck that came with the lathe is a craftsman 383 22970. I guess the problem with it is bell mouth. After reading a bit about it and wondering why it only has places to use one tommy bar I found that you are supposed to engage the back gear and then use the tommy bar. At least one person commented that they had broken off some teeth in the back gear arrangement due to this chuck. I thought about boring out the jaws to rid it of bell mouth but then again why bother? :)

Anyone else had this problem with this chuck breaking off teeth while tightening/loosening while the lathe is in back gear? Is there a better way than to use back gear? I may just buy another 3-jaw scroll chuck.
 
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I've never heard of locking the back gear to tighten the chuck - the turning of the chuck key is in a totally different plane to spindle rotation anyway. I wonder if they were talking about loosening the chuck to get it off the spindle. I sometimes lock the back gears to get the chuck off, but never with enough force to hurt the gears. If the chuck is that stuck on, you need to use other means to get it off or you will damage something.

I'd say grind the jaws. Shouldn't take too long and then you can assess the rest of the chuck. Wouldn't hurt to take it to pieces and clean it out too, so you can see what the scroll looks like.
 
There are chucks that use keys, chucks that use 2 tommy bars, and then there's this one. It uses 1 tommy bar. A tommy bar is just a round metal rod. Locking the back gear takes the place of the second tommy bar so that you only need 1 tommy bar.

See the edge of this chuck. The two pieces each have round holes around the rim. You put 1 tommy bar in a hole on one piece and another tommy bar in a hole on the other piece. Then you move the tommy bars in opposite directions. One way tightens the chuck and the other way loosens the chuck.

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oh right, I completely spaced about that. Only one tommy bar would be pretty weird. Still, you shouldn't need to use so much force to tighten the chuck that you'll strip gears.
 
On my lathe the bull gear and the gear that drives it were stripped of lots of teeth when I got it. The chuck was also stuck on the spindle.

Hmmm. I wonder. But I'll never really know.
 
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