Best way to paint a lathe?

[Ridgerunner]

What a beauty. Amazing what a lot of work and TLC can accomplish.

[driggars]

Mike
I assume when you said PM board, That is practical machinsist board?
Clint

[MikeC]

Correct.

[ZipSnipe]

Carwiz, that is a beautiful job you did, I found an old Atlas Lathe that I could buy but it needs a lot of what you just did and now I am inspired. Truly nice work.

[rawMACH]

I bought a Logan 820 lathe many years ago, hardly any paint left on it, and also surface rust, I disassembled it, need to clean it and paint it.

Some one on YOUTUBE used Purple Power Degreaser and Oven Degreaser to remove the old pant, then he used Dupli-Color Engine Enamel that contains Ceramic Resins for paint,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Qki8Tr_xg



any advice ?

[pete]

Well...................................you did ask for advise and probably no matter how I word this someone somewhere is going to get upset. I guess it all depends on what you want from any machine tool. Yes they'll work better and smoother with all those years of crud removed, but it's still a worn machine. It depends on a persons exact definition of what that restored, reconditioned or rebuilt term really means. Most wouldn't call any car restored without fully rebuilding ALL of the mechanicals and I think machine tools should also fit into the same category as far as being "restored". Anything that's worn enough to cause inaccuracy's or issues needs to be properly rebuilt before you can use any of those terms about any machine. If you really want to do it right then buying or trying to get a copy from your local library of Machine Tool Reconditioning should be the first thing on your list unless you rebuild machine tools on your day job.

Those detailed paint jobs and new or reconditioned placards do look nice and most probably would do a bit better work on a clean new looking machine. It still boils down to what the machine can actually produces in the end. And that starts with the basic geometric machine alignments and just how worn those are. You can even end up with a machine more accurate and better than when it left the factory if you want it badly enough. It isn't cheap, fast or even easy to do it right. It's a money and time pit to be honest. And depending on just how much you know and understand it can take a great deal of research just to learn what needs to be done and where to find the people who can properly do the work your not equipped to do. A skilled machinist who knows a worn machine can wring out accurate parts lesser skilled couldn't possibly do. The less experience you have then the better the machine needs to be to help compensate for the inexperience I think.

Having a machines bed and slides reground so there back to an unworn condition, rescrapeing for true alignment and oil retention where needed, reshimming the carriage to compensate for the bed regrinding, replacing feed, lead screws and nuts, bushing and bearing replacements, even motor rewinding can be a very expensive path. Many can't justify it. Do it right and you would have a brand new machine under the nice paint and polish. I'm not sure how many would agree with me, but that doesn't mean I'm totally wrong either.

It's a great deal of work to strip any machine down, clean, prep, polish and paint it. If it's still incapable of producing accurate parts then it's more of a shop ornament than a usable tool in my not so humble opinion. The guy in that video made one excellent improvement by replacing the spindle with the cam lock type. Items like that can give you a much better and user friendly machine that may not have been made in high numbers or any numbers by the OEM.

[BadDog]

I totally agree with Pete. A (very) few of my machines got new paint. Pretty much only the ones that had already had multiple butchered flaking paint jobs that looked like it had leprosy. Mostly I just make sure it's still in good enough shape (mainly wear wise) to be useful for my needs, clean them up, fix anything needed (broken castings, bearings, switches, etc), and put it to work. If it's just from use/coolant, I really like the old shop patina better than a shiny spit-shite paint job anyway. And I don't have to worry about chipping or otherwise damaging my fancy paint job i spent days/weeks working on. Sure, nice shiny machines in a neat-as-a-pin shop look slick posted on the internet, but I built my shop to do things. And those things include fixing up other old machines, but putting all that work into polishing up a machine tool strikes me about the same as the folks that painstakingly disassemble to clean/paint/polish an old (non-collector, different thing) tractor that they are putting back to work. Now, if that's your thing and what makes you happy, more power to you and have a blast. This is just my outlook on the subject. I was reading a post earlier today about a guy who collects antique hand planes and makes custom planes. He's even got a room bigger than my first shop, looks like a museum room (or surgical suite) dedicated to nothing but displaying his planes and a small table that he indicates is used for doing work with those planes. I'm fond of old hand tools too, including planes, but, not for me...

So back to the original question, best way to paint a lathe? In most cases, not at all. But then I also kinda like the current "natural patina" trend you see on a lot of resto-mods (particularly trucks) these days. A friend has an original AZ 59 Apache that came in turqoise paint but with quite a lot (maybe 30%?) of AZ sun "patina". Cleaned up and clear coated with a modern drive train, brakes, and suspension; that thing is fantastic!

[rawMACH]

Thanks Pete and BadDog, this lathe was neglected for over 30 years, hardly any paint left on it and rusted allover the place, bearings are in bad shape, bull gear and belt need to be replaced, defiantly needs disassembly to repair the bad parts, so while at it why not remove the rust and give it a paint job, I will try to post a picture to show the condition of this lathe

[pete]

You and I think very much alike Russ. And those flaking paint jobs you've run across would be due to poor prep and not getting the oil etc out of the metal first as I'm sure you know better than I do.

Well again it's just my opinion rawMACH but if your going to pull it down that far then just be careful where you gather your information off the net. Far too many don't know nearly enough and are recommending methods that can easily do more harm than good. "Lapping" the ways and slides would be a prime example of that. Yes the machine will feel smoother while moving the slides but you have zero control of where and how much metal is being removed. All lathes should be built so they face just slightly concave, that's done by machining, grinding, and maybe scraping the cross slide so it faces an extremely fine angle inwards off of dead flat. if my memory is correct I seem to recall that's somewhere between .001"- .002" over 12" for good toolroom lathes. That hand lapping with (ugg!) valve grinding paste or other can't possibly do that to the required accuracy and it's much more likely you'd make the alignment worse instead of better. Hand lapping can produce very round and accurate parts but machine tool sides aren't one of them at least by people with our experience.

There is some great information on Youtube by very skilled and knowledgeable people. Nick Mueller would be just one of them. I also highly recommend Googling Georg Schlesinger. You'll find his methods for the proper testing of machine tools. You might not do all of them, but using that information should give you a rough idea of any major issues on your lathe. I believe his tests are still a recognized industry standard even today for the better machine tool manufacturers. But you can use those tests to decide how much your willing to correct. If you don't already have a 10ths reading dial test indicator and at least a small surface plate you may want to think about getting some cheaper ones. But it can get real expensive real fast if you start getting into it a bit more.

[rawMACH]

Paint info

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/ge ... ery-72430/

[Glenn Brooks]

Interesting this thread is 10 years old in the early part. I wonder if the advice offered then is still valid - given the enormous changes in paint chemistry since 2006? In years past, I used one part marine epoxy undercoat for machine tools and other metal surfaces, with great success. Also a rusted (non machined) surface, say the bed and headstock of a lathe, for instance, might benefit from a treatment of OSPHO - phosphoric acid to chemically alter and seal the surface prior to a flat coat. But with the new paint formulations, maybe these approaches are obsolete. Just curious.

[jpfalt]

I've recently acquired a South Bend 9" Junior lathe that was partially repainted. The original finish is black and investigation shows it to be japanned. When warmed, the finish flows. When cold, the finish chips. It's main virtue seems to be that it prevents rust and covers casting flws like bondo. The factory finish is asphalt mixed with linseed oil and then baked and is the finish Ford used on their original black cars. It is essentially a tar filled linoleum. I found that washing it with simple green kept coming up black on the wipe rag until you hit bare metal. Acetone melts the finish and allows it to be wiped around and levelled. It also appears that painting over the japanned surface is largely futile since any paint that hardens will chip off with little provocation as the japanning softens and flows under the surface paint. The best I have been able to do is add acetone to the enamel paint which has the effect of melting and fusing into the surface of the original finish.

Anyone have a good method to successfully repaint over the original finish, or am I doomed to strip the whole thing to bare metal?