Wood lathe build

thanks for all the pictures. It is fascinating to see your setups and process.
 
Great use of the headstock bearing bores as a fixture to set up for boring the tailstock bore. No measuring, little chance of making an error. Smart thinking, John.
 
I could have simply taken my castings to my old shop and used the horizontal boring mill to do the work, but thought that the "thrill of the chase" would be in making do with what machinery was at hand, as they would have done in days passed; the milling machine was stretched to its limits so far as movements of the axes are concerned, that bore is nearly 9" long, the feed movement is not much more than that. Thinking further about it, I could have used the universal spindle and aligned it with the table's movement; the attachment is mostly used as a vertical attachment, but swivels in two axes in 360 degrees, I used it that way once so far to cut a spiral gear that exceeded the swivel capability of the table.
 
Great use of the headstock bearing bores as a fixture to set up for boring the tailstock bore. No measuring, little chance of making an error. Smart thinking, John.
Today, I completed boring out of the tailstock; I found that with the setup shown, I got a taper in the bore; line boring is done with the "tail end" of the bar supported with a bearing that does not move along with the work, unlike what I have illustrated, that accounted for the taper; I finally moved the tail end bearing about 5" further than the pics show, that is, away from the casting being bored, this eliminated nearly all the taper, and I finished to size with an adjustable reamer.
 
Here is the next installment, the continued finishing of the tailstock casting; this was delayed a couple of weeks by having to help my carpenter tear off part of my house's roof and do some fairly extensive rot repair, replacing several rafters and sheathing, then covering with plywood; re roofing remains!
1- setting up to mill backside of the base
2- milling the backside
3- setting up to drill the hole for the hold down bolt
4- setting up to slit the quill clamp
5- slitting the quill clamp, first cut
5- complete quill cut
6- setup on drill press to drill and tap for quill clamp
7-finding center of layout with wiggler
8-9-10- drilling and tapping for the binding clamp
11-12-13-14 - setup and drilling of the clampdown bolt hole in the tailstock base
15-16- boss on top of tailstock base showing hole drilled previously through the bottom, showing the back spot facing tool
17-18 showing back spot facing tool and finished boss

This completes the tailstock work other than smoothing up the castings for paint and making the clamp and the quill and screw, etc.

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Here is the last operation on the headstock, I'm drilling holes for the bearing retaining cover bolts, I'm using the covers as a drill jig to locate the holes.

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Here is another last operation on the headstock! I'm drilling and tapping the bolt holes in the bottom of the headstock that will hold it down to the ways, of course, drilling and tapping is a pretty simple operation, but I show these pictures mostly to show the setup, and the use of planer jacks to support the free end and keep it level under the force of drilling. I show the use of a countersink to chamfer the holes before tapping, something that should always be done for tapped holes; the more experienced know this, but newbies may not. Fact is most any hole should be chamfered to remove burrs, saving many cut fingers----

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In this installment, I am cutting a key slot in the tailstock bore to key the quill so that it does not rotate, as is common on nearly all types of lathes. I am doing the job on my #2 B&S mill with the slotting attachment; preparatory to doing this operation, I drilled a hole from the bottom of the barrel of the casting for the tool to run out into, the keyway is about 2" long. The setup is with two parallels driven into the table slots and the casting is clamped to them with the barrel resting on the table and clamped down to it with the strap clamps.

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Here are some pics of threading the back end bore of the tailstock for the end cap, I turned down a piece of steel for an arbor to swing it in the lathe; I used the steady rest because I did not want to cut the piece of material any shorter; note that I used the tailstock quill clamp to secure the casting on the arbor and used a lathe dog to ensure that it did not slip on the arbor. I cut the thread by feeding straight in, not the best practice, but due to interferences, I was unable to swing the compound to 30 degrees (No, not 29.5 I was not taught that, and am not a member of that club!) because the taper attachment slide ran into a structural post of the building; on cast iron this is not a problem, as the chips do not much interfere with each other. I first made a thread gage, 1 3/8"-14 to fit the thread, as shown. I did the threading in reverse, and cut a recess to start the tool in, and backed out of the hole with the threading tool.

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