The Home Machinist!

I don't have any way of dating Sheldons, but I have a 1948 thirteen-inch. Its serial number is TMWQ 14527. I like it so well that when I got a chance to buy a ten-inch Sheldon I whipped out the check book before the seller changed his mind. For some reason, I suspect it dates back to the sixties. It...

I have two 9-inch SB lathes to restore. The spindles on both are rough so I intend to clean them up by grinding. This means the existing bronze bearings will be seriously oversized. I have bearing bronze stock on hand and am prepared to machine new bearings; however, I'm wondering if it would be eas...

I have a toolpost grinder and have used it on a job that IMHO could not have been done without it. I had to clean up a case-hardened lathe spindle that had been badly scored. I seriously doubt carbide cutting tools could have done the job. Because of the way it was damaged, the carbide would have ha...

[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/smile.gif"%20alt="[/img] I have two Sheldon lathes. One is a 13-inch that dates back to the fifties (but it had an easy life) and the other is a ten inch. They are very good machines. Sheldons may be lightweight, but the 13-incher really made my pickup squat when...

[img]/ubb/images/graemlins/frown.gif"%20alt="[/img]I wish that would work. Unfortunately, this machine was built in June of 1930. Somewhere along the way, SB changed their design. Most 9" SB parts out there will not fit my lathe. I learned this the hard way when I went to install an M...

I'm not awake, yet. I should have said "plastic deformation." Indeed, the bend is 1-1/2 thousandths, not fifteen thousandths. I've tried straightening in a press, before, and even with the use of a dial indicator to monitor things, it was very difficult to avoid overshooting and then it wa...

I have a 9" SB lathe spindle that has a 0.0015" bow in it. In a previous lifetime (before I bought it) the compound had a serious tangle with a chuck. Besides the compound being broken in half, the bend must have occured at the same time. I'm contemplating using spot heating, not force, to...

I recently had the pleasure of delivering my son's 2001 Cummins-powered Dodge w/ 6-speed manual transmission to his place in Denver. The first day on the road my main concern was to get across the mountains while there was a break in the winter weather. So, I set the cruise to 75 mph and got [img]/u...

Those wipers look like they'd be good ones. But, I just finished equipping my machines with new felts. I got my felt from Brownells. They offer a package of soft, medium and hard felts for a reasonable sum. I decided to go this route after looking in the McMaster-Carr catalog. They list such a dizzy...

My tool height gage is nearly identical except that I have a threaded section near the top of the vertical rod. The top horizontal bar is mounted on a collar. The collar is held at the right height with knurled nuts above and below. That way, my gage is adjustable. Of course, once it's set it doesn'...

Several people replied off list and pointed me in the right direction. As it turns out, the answer was right under my nose in the MSC catalog. I should have studied it a bit more closely. For those who are curious, MSC lists replacement Rubberflex collets for a variety of tapping heads. One of the r...

I picked up a used tapping head at PRIME and am very pleased with what cost me only $15. It seems to work just fine; but, it only came with one rubber-flex type of collet. I need to find a source for more collets and hope that someone out there can help me. It appears to resemble a Tapmatic and I'm ...