Thursday, July 31, 2008

Trials and Tribulations (Murphy comes to visit)


Now that the Rails are both done, I went about mounting them. After some adjustment on the spacing (surprising how long that can actually take) I got them set right. At this point I decided I was far enough into this project, that it would end up being a keeper. I disassembled the cross slide and vise and cleaned up the stand for painting. After a few coats of an enamel primer, and a super fine sand, I gave it two coats of enamel (yea, typical machine grey, I guess I'm not to adventurist).
Once dry, I loaded on the carriage (with the Gib) and made sure it moved well.

With that done, I then went about making a lock handle for it, which simply tightens the Gib up in the middle. After I was done, I realized that I would have to re due it and have some sort of "ratchet" feature, so the handle position could be maximized.

Well, you know what they say, the best laid plans.... If something can go wrong it will, and if something CANT go wrong, it WILL. I finally got my ACME taps (got a left AND right thread one) I decided to start on the lead screw. It would be a challenge as the lathe wont do anything bigger than about 26", and I really need about 34". Well, that when I found the first problem. Seems I have no way to change the lathe feed screw direction WITHOUT reversing the Spindle. So, I guess this lathe wont cut left hand threads (what I needed). Oh well, I will have to do a right handed thread. As I dug out the gears to set up for 10TPI, I noticed I was missing a gear (98 teeth). Figures, its only ever used for 10TPI. So, looks like I will scrap the idea of threading the lead screw and buy a length of ACME threaded rod. Guess I might as well work on a break handle set up that will allow the handle position to be changed for more flexibility. I will see what bits and pieces I can do while I wait for a piece of threaded rod to get here, once I find a place to buy it (seems you can get everything on the planet from the US, and you can get everything on the planet in Canada IF you order it from the US).

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