Hi
I bought a South Bend 10L from an ad on Craigslist yesterday. Using wswells.com we dated it to approximately 1946 or so. Its one of the ones with a single change lever on the quick change gear box. Its mounted on the big ole cabinet with the under mounted drive system.
I got it home and in the garage. I figured I'd fire it up - turns out the electrical didn't like the drive home... Rewired the thing today.
I don't have a headstock center and looks like that will be a very difficult thing to find since it has the proprietary taper. So I couldn't get any idea as to how well the tailstock alignement was. I noticed that something didn't seem right though. When I put a center drill into the a chuck on the tailstock it was way out to the right. At first I thought it was the left - right alignment on the tailstock but after playing a bit (and yes I'll admit not having messed with a tailstock alignment or lathes for pretty much 20+ years I forgot about the alignment marks on the tailstock). Then I realized that the drill chuck that came with the lathe was pretty much a mess, turning it in the tailstock so that the taper turned resulted in the center drill doing a big arc. I figure the arbor must be bent. Got another chuck from and a 1 to 2 adapter (borrowed chuck from my atlas 6"). That seemed better and seemed to approximately align center left to right. Went to drill a center hole right up near the chuck and amazingly I could not get the hole to drill center, it kept drifting to the left. I knew the left and right was close. Then I started looking closer and found that the height of the tailstock looks to be about a 1/16th or maybe even slight more below center.
The previous owner said he had taken the headstock, tailstock and carriage off to move it a couple of times. That thing is a beast to try and move by oneself. So either there was some shims between the lower and upper parts of the tailstock and they got lost. Or somehow the headstock is on a vertical uphill slope. Because I was so close to the headstock when trying to center drill and there is no noticeable gap between the headstock and bed I'm temporarily going on the assumption of tailstock shims??
I have to admit I'm way out of my league on solving this problem. Is it possible that the tailstock had shims - what would a tailstock shim look like? Where would I get them? Without a headstock center, what would I use to get to the right height? I only have a 3-Jaw chuck and a face plate.
Sincerely
Mark R. Jonkman
I bought a South Bend 10L from an ad on Craigslist yesterday. Using wswells.com we dated it to approximately 1946 or so. Its one of the ones with a single change lever on the quick change gear box. Its mounted on the big ole cabinet with the under mounted drive system.
I got it home and in the garage. I figured I'd fire it up - turns out the electrical didn't like the drive home... Rewired the thing today.
I don't have a headstock center and looks like that will be a very difficult thing to find since it has the proprietary taper. So I couldn't get any idea as to how well the tailstock alignement was. I noticed that something didn't seem right though. When I put a center drill into the a chuck on the tailstock it was way out to the right. At first I thought it was the left - right alignment on the tailstock but after playing a bit (and yes I'll admit not having messed with a tailstock alignment or lathes for pretty much 20+ years I forgot about the alignment marks on the tailstock). Then I realized that the drill chuck that came with the lathe was pretty much a mess, turning it in the tailstock so that the taper turned resulted in the center drill doing a big arc. I figure the arbor must be bent. Got another chuck from and a 1 to 2 adapter (borrowed chuck from my atlas 6"). That seemed better and seemed to approximately align center left to right. Went to drill a center hole right up near the chuck and amazingly I could not get the hole to drill center, it kept drifting to the left. I knew the left and right was close. Then I started looking closer and found that the height of the tailstock looks to be about a 1/16th or maybe even slight more below center.
The previous owner said he had taken the headstock, tailstock and carriage off to move it a couple of times. That thing is a beast to try and move by oneself. So either there was some shims between the lower and upper parts of the tailstock and they got lost. Or somehow the headstock is on a vertical uphill slope. Because I was so close to the headstock when trying to center drill and there is no noticeable gap between the headstock and bed I'm temporarily going on the assumption of tailstock shims??
I have to admit I'm way out of my league on solving this problem. Is it possible that the tailstock had shims - what would a tailstock shim look like? Where would I get them? Without a headstock center, what would I use to get to the right height? I only have a 3-Jaw chuck and a face plate.
Sincerely
Mark R. Jonkman