South Bend 9 Original Way Roughing

[Carlos]

Hi guys, interesting.

What would really help would be a pic of an frosting done by SB.
Does anyone own a late where its frosting is known to be original? Can you post a pic?

[spro]

I snapped a few pics of mine's ways but they didn't turn out well. The lathe is newer than yours. Just a hint of catching the thumbnail at the ways' apex of the worn area. The top of the front V way shouldn't be worn much. S.B. milled a slot in the saddle so it would stand as the V ways wore.
I understand that you want to know if some PO dressed it up. They wouldn't go the time to actually file down the unworn areas, so an accurate straight edge spanning head to tail, would reveal the wear of one side of the prism. Alternately; the flat area between the outer V and the flat way is a register. It likely has some dings etc but it was milled when the ways were milled. If you get that cleaned up and make a base for a DI, you can read the wear of one side of the prism. This is different than running the carriage across for measurements because the carriage is following the worn surface.

[Carlos]

@spro: that sounds interesting. Sorry but I am newby. Can you explain a bit more in detail? I dont really understand what exactly you mean.
What is a DI?

[neanderman]

What is a DI?

Dial indicator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indicator ... prov=sfla1

[spro]

"Twist" is important when measuring this but I don't see the 9A getting twisted. It would've been mounted tightly wrong a long time or it is under tension. They all have some wear which takes off the original frosting. We need to know the gross wear that makes it inaccurate. The saddle has a slot above the V and so does the tailstock for its V. It is when ways are so worn, the top of the V's have worn into the saddle or tailstock base. If you have that, it isn't good.
The measurements would just confirm it. There are procedures to rebuild it but it isn't just the ways anymore.

[spro]

I bought a S.B. 11" some years and it was worn bad. It was made in 1933 and saw War service. Then sometimes used as a grinder, so the bed was shot. It had that remarkable oak bench full of tooling, which remains under my current lathe. I bought a S.B. 13" which takes up some room. Again, it was very worn but has some pedigree of service in WWII. Not my go-to lathe these days.

[clifforddward]

My 9" South Bend Lathe has way scraping all the way to the end of the headstock...just visible in the lower left corner of this photo where the lathe bed way shows in front of the headstock.

My lathe is from 1964, ordered new by a hobbiest and never in a production environment. As a result there was almost no wear on the ways when I got it around 2003 or so. I have the original order ticket, and unfortunately the original buyer did not pay the extra for flame hardened ways...otherwise I'm confident there would be zero wear! I've been using the lathe for the past 15 years in my hobby activities, and can just now start to see a bit of wear along the ways.

I've seen a number of SB lathes over the years...scraping is slightly different on each of them...I suspect a function of the individual technique of the person at the factory doing the work.

[pete]

Yep as Steve's catalog picture and your lathe shows that scraping was done on the way surfaces at the head stock end and it's safe to assume were also scraped under the head stock as well. There's every reason to do so since that scraping get's done for alignment purposes. Both of Carlos's pictures in his first post show irregular and widely spaced lines. Scraping for alignment afaik is at least 30 or more points per inch. Oil flaking or frosting such as Bridgeport did to there ground way surfaces is done for at least two reasons. Oil retention to slow the wear down and to help break up the finely ground surfaces and prevent stick/slip from those ground surfaces trying to stick together. There's multiple methods and patterns of doing that oil flaking as well as those scraping patterns. And while it's sometimes done on already scraped surfaces, I haven't seen any evidence showing South Bend did so on there machines. Even if they did so on as a special order I'm sure most would class what Carlos showed as flaking and not scraping since the lines are so widely spaced. As already said there's no reason to waste time adding oil flaking under the head stock since there's no gain. And with it as noticeable as it is in his pictures the actual scraping South Bend would have done should be easily visible as well. Any well done oil flaking I've seen always exhibits a regular pattern. A half moon flaking pattern is only one of them. I've been wrong before, but I'd still bet that what Carlos showed wasn't done by South Bend when the lathe was built. If Carlos's lathe was properly surface ground at some point due to high wear and then flaked by the owner or someone else it's basic alignments may be just fine. But it would take checking with a very good straight edge to be sure.

[Glenn Brooks]

Here’s what original factory scraping and flaking looks like on a circa 1923 SB 9. Now at the end, SB quality declined seriously from their heyday, but certainly looks like the flaking on Carlos lathe was done after the build, possibly by someone with a biax type machine. Iam no expert on SB production line changes, but this certainly looks like a shop fix, or maybe someone learning how to flake.

Glenn