South Bend 9a Restoration (pic Heavy)

Use a small India stone like you would use to touch up a cutting tool on the lathe. Start with a fairly fine grade, and go coarser if it is not doing the job. As I have said, aqny scratches below the surface will just fill with oil, but metal above the surface will break the oil film and cause more damage. I have lapped these type of bearings together with fine grinding paste to finish them off, and to get some idea of the contact areas, but you must scrupulously clean them out afterwards, then oil the surfaces and adjust till the play just disappears. There needs to be a film of oil between the bearing surfaces at all times.
Phil
 
Great job, Wildo! Lots of nice pics, too. That is going to be a sweet lathe when you're done!
 
I don't know how it would work, but you might put some blue die on the inner bearing surface and rotate something in it to highlight the high spots. Work it over and do several times until high spots are gone. Just a thought.

Oh, and nice job!!
 
As suggested a fine India stone will work, or a white (hard) arkansas stone, the India is going to remove metal faster, you can get them in lots of different shapes, check ebay. I use the Arkansas exclusively on my mag chuck on the surface grinder. when I'm scraping, during the roughing I use my norton India fine, then the more I bring in the surface I switch to the Arkansas stone so the cut rate is slower and I'm not just stoning down the highs to create more highs that aren't actually scraped in. Idk if you've ever stoned a high spot before but you will definitely feel a high spot with the stone, I would also stone your bed, I can see some divots in it, remember not to put alot of pressure, use spirits or windex as lube, be careful as you can literally stone a low spot into the surface so don't Camp out in one spot too long
 
Oh yeah, and be sure and flatten your brand new stone, I can guarantee it won't be flat out of the box, to flatten it you need a flat surface, and some 220 grit open drywall paper, rub the stone against the sand paper on the flat surface until it's flat, use windex as lube, lots of windex and rinse often
A small square foot glass pane is flat enough to rub against, spray windex on the glass and place the sandpaper on it, helps to keep it from moving around, you can use regular wet dry paper also, I just noticed that the open drywall paper cuts really fast against a hard stone
 
What a fantastic job!!!! Every part of it looks great, but I too am amazed at how well the chip pan came out - NEVER would have thought of doing it that way.
 
What a fantastic job!!!! Every part of it looks great, but I too am amazed at how well the chip pan came out - NEVER would have thought of doing it that way.

Thank you! I have pretty limited tools when it comes to sheet metal work. Well, to be clear, I pretty much have no sheet metal tools. :) This was the only way that it occurred to me to solve the problem. I really didn't even end up with a ton of bondo on the piece- most of it was sanded off just to get the part smooth. I appreciate the comments!
 
Another update on the lathe.

I drilled out the bull gear safety cover in order to install a plastic bushing. This will allow me to tighten the screw that holds this cover in place, while providing a nice surface for the cover to swing on. And a cool side effect- because of the plastic, the tighter I make the screw the more the plastic will "bulge" allowing the tension on the cover to be adjusted. Kind of a cool mod, I think:
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It seems paint prep is a never ending task on this project...
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But I got a lot more of the parts painted:
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I'm not sure if I mentioned this yet or not, but I replaced the bull gear guard as well. I have no idea if the guard that was on it was original or not. I can't find any pictures of early 40's South Bends with a cover like this. At any rate, I think it's super ugly! I just love the flowing curves of the vintage equipment, and so a more round cover was sourced. If anyone has any info on the original cover- specifically if it's actually original or not, I'd be very curious!
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Next I turned my attention to the spindle since my new ceramic stones arrived last night. (Thanks for the tip, chevydyl!) Now, full disclosure, I've never done this before. I have no idea if I did it "right" or not, but I'm happy with the results. And let's be honest here- whatever I did to this was better than leaving it with the nasty gulled surface that was there. So... take it a little easy on me. I'm new to this!!!!

I stoned the high spots on the spindle with a "fine" square ceramic stone:
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After that, I wasn't really all too happy with the surface finish left by the stone, so I mounted the spindle between centers on my wood lathe and polished the bearing surfaces with polishing compound. I am very happy with the surface finish now. No "major" abrasives were used, just the polishing compound. I could be wrong, but I think it would take a LONG time to remove even a tenth with just polishing compound and a paper towel:
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The spindle cleaned up beautifully.

The cast bearing surface in the head was another story. I don't think it's even accurate to call the damage there "gulling" as it's more like deep scoring. It wasn't easy to stone this since it's an internal surface. I did use a fine, round ceramic stone which makes sense, but it was still hard to really get at it. Overall, it was a lot of work, but I do believe I got the scoring down to surface height. I slid a steel rule across the surface and it didn't catch anywhere. However, I can't polish this up like I did the spindle- I certainly have no way to spin the head like I could spin the spindle. I don't know if this surface finish is "good enough" or if it needs to be polished, or even if it's more along the lines of "don't even think about touching that surface, you idiot!" But again, remember, the scoring along that one band was pretty severe, and it would have only gotten worse without some kind of intervention. I took care of that with the stone. But now what? I'm thinking that maybe one of those headlight polishing kits with the foam "puff" ball might work connected to a cordless drill with some polishing compound. Is that a stupid idea? Or a smart one??
This one is 3" in diameter which would be about perfect:
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Here's the head after stoning:
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I wanted to put the spindle in the lathe head tonight, but I realized I don't have the proper grease nor the grease zerk for the cone pulley. I just ordered the zerk and it will get here on the 28th. I did have a question about the grease though. Please check this thread if you've actually read this far... http://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/super-lube-for-lathe-cone-pulley.44898/

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