Show us your South Bend Lathe

HMF

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We take great pride in our machines!

This is the thread to post photos of your beloved South Bend lathes, show "before" and "after photos and make our mouths water with the tooling and accessories you have accumulated for your machine.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but some captions would be awfully nice too!

So come on....let's see what you got!


Best,

Nelson
 
Here is my daily user my 1974 SB10K. Just happen to be winding mig wire in this pic.
And my 1941 "S" 10L. USN model sold to GE
And my 1919 15" x 6' From the Buckeye Automotive Company...Bob

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I enjoyed your restoration. Great job!

How do you remove the drawers to the metal cabinet on the 10k lathe you included in the post?

I have a similar lathe and want to remove the drawers in my lathe and repaint.

Don't see how the slides can be unlatched to remove the drawers??

Your suggestions are appreciated.
 
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Mine is a SB9A w/3 1/2' bed 1968 year, picked it up in Feb. and tore it apart to fix and paint, finished it up in May. I added a QCTP, live center and drill chuck and some tooling. I am going to make drawers for the table, got the wood, but did not do it yet. The lathe is a little messy now, but nowhere to put the stuff yet until I make some drawers. The first pic is the first day I got it, the second pic is when I was making something on it in June.
Paul
 
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Just received the Serial Card for my 16”/24” x 10’ South Bend 79833
Looks like it was born a 16” and the 24” added later.
It has only moved 60 miles in the last 75 years and I moved it 45 miles of the 75 mi.

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I found this lathe about 15 years ago. It came on a pallet with no tooling and a 3 jaw chuck missing a set of jaws.
It was in good condition otherwise.The bench and most of the tooling I built for it.
I replaced it with an Asian machine a couple years ago.
It was metric and could not cut an imperial thread.

Terry


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Back in 1998 I ran into a great deal on a SB lathe. Below is part of the article I wrote about it.
............
A few weeks ago I asked my junk man if he ever picked-up any machinery, and if so bring it by. It may be worth more to me than the scrap yard. He started talking about some old computer printers and stuff he had found, but I explained that I was looking for machine shop stuff, you know, cast iron. He told me he had an old "metal cuttin machin", he didn't know what it was, just that it was 3-phase and nobody wanted it. I told him 3-phase was not a problem, and questioned him some more. He open his glove box and handed me a bent up piece of brass. I looked at the plate and at the top center it said (in bold letters) "South Bend Lathe Works". I told him I was indeed interested. The machine was in a pile of old chain link fence and posts only about two blocks away. It was still on a very large oak pallet, and held down with some large steel straps. I couldn't see it very well, the plastic tarp was disintegrating, but I could see that there was indeed a lathe under all of that. I offer him $250 for the mess, and he gladly accepted the offer. I went to get my engine hoist back from a friend while he and his helper loaded the lathe on his truck with the help of a large front end loader. We got the lathe over to my storage warehouse and unloaded it with the help of the engine hoist. Only then was I able to really get a look at my find. The lathe was a South Bend Heavy 10. It had a Springfield Armory property tag. I'm sure the pallet was the one the government had mounted it to when it was surplused. A quick inventory showed that it had the following tooling: 3-jaw, 4-jaw, hand-wheel collet closer, 17 collets, face plate, drive plate, threading dial, micrometer carriage stop, collet rack, and bunch of other small stuff. A few items were very rusty, but most of the tooling and the lathe itself was covered with cosmoline. The lathe cleaned-up nicely, and with a new paint job looks like new. Most of the ways still have frosting. I removed the 45 year old 3-phase motor and installed a new single phase unit. The machine runs beautifully. BTW, The lathe is on a cabinet stand with three drawers. I even have the key for the drawers!
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Here is what the lathe looked like after I scraped off much of the dirt, and after I did a complete tear down and rebuild. I sold the lathe years ago. I was hoping to find someone who understood the significance of the Springfield Armory tag, but the guy who bought it was more interested in building model steam engines than gunsmithing.

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