The Home Machinist!

I picked up this Wilton 1404 c clamp today. Must be for welding because of the shield plus the screw appears to be brass. Am I right? I saw some on the auction site but without the shield.

Pics of my switch. The date on the little label is Feb. 1947.

It is interesting comparing how our machines are similar and different. I have the original switch on mine but it is not hooked up to the motor, so I need to see if I can confirm that it works and is able to operate my motor. I am attaching pics of my draw tube, which looks original, but doesn't app...

One thing I just thought to ask is if you have a brass ring that fits on your draw tube that measures 0.1345" thick? I wonder if that is to space it out to compensate for some of the extra length of my collet?

Here are two pics of the collet, so you can see how long it is, not including the flat transition between taper and face. After putting a flat edge on the face it does have a slight crown to it.

In general yes. I am not at home to take a pic but mine have a flat face instead of the rounded face and the transition from the taper to the face is a little less than 1/8" and is parallel to the body of the collet. Your picture looks like there is no flat transition like I have. When I measur...

That is a very interesting idea. Do those collet sleeves have a name I can search for? My collet is 3/4" so I could do something similar. I do have a lathe but I haven't tackled anything like that yet but it would be a great learning experience. I do have one question that has slightly stumped ...

Steve, I did a little testing today with both collets. With the 4pn and the boring bar there was only 0.001 run-out. I did the same with the R8 and two different end mills and got 0.005 and 0.006 run-out. These were taken within about 1/4" from the collet opening since I couldn't get any farthe...

The one I was looking at is on ebay and is the 3C-7 in your first picture. It has 11 collets, so at $900 that is only $81.81 per collet if that is all you want!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PRATT-WHITNEY- ... Swa9Fa57Gw

I just added my location. Nice lathe. Does that use the 4pn collets? I saw a P&W lathe online somewhere recently but don't recall now. I will have to see if I can find it. I don't need another lathe but who knows.

The only thing I got was the one collet and a boring bar. The vise I just bought while at Hershey last weekend. I saw an original vise on ebay but it was almost $500. Here is a link to the x-axis screw assembly https://www.ebay.com/itm/pratt-whitney-workhead-table-x-lead-screw/292562216159. The dial...

John, the draw-bar should help keep the R8 parallel, just like the draw-tube does for the 4pn. I haven't check accuracy so I can't promise anything. You are correct that the angles don't match, which is why I checked the contact area of both and they both have a very narrow contact patch compared to...