Dubious Restoration

[SteveHGraham]

I was watching Youtube with my parrots, and I found a video of a guy who "restores" tools. He found a Rockwell lathe with a ton of rust on the ways, and he cleaned it up. He showed the rusty 4-jaw chuck, with heavily corroded spindle threads, and he boasted that it looked like it had never been used.

The machine looks beautiful now (from a distance), but I wonder if the person who buys the lathe from him will understand what he's getting.

There are a lot of neat restoration videos on Youtube, for things other than precision tools. It's somewhat irksome to come across a video of someone giving a metal lathe the same treatment he would give a lawnmower.

People commenting on the video are all excited, telling him what a great job he did. In one comment, the video guy says Scotchbrite removes rust and leaves the original surface. So apparently, rust comes from the air. It lands on steel and sticks to it, and when you grind it off, the steel is still there.

[BadDog]

Scotch brite and a few gallons of cheap house paint, and you've got yourself a new lathe!

For this and a lot of other similar things, I've heard the derogatory term "Krylon rebuild" (and variants) applied.

[spro]

This is a particularly interesting series of videos since Russ, I and others are familiar with these lathes. They are really great lathes and "the guy" has completely gone through and explained many elements. He has been meticulous in explaining the inner workings and cleaning parts, which we will would hope to never see. Really though, we will confront the same things after long service. They are fine machines and he has opened the book to others. I don't know why paint is even an issue but he showed how to deal with that.
The topic of surface rust on hardened bedways would relate to the carriage slides and that was cleaned off before use.

[Steggy]

Scotch brite and a few gallons of cheap house paint, and you've got yourself a new lathe!

As the old wheeze goes, paint can hide a thousand sins.

[Harold_V]

I was watching Youtube with my parrots, and I found a video of a guy who "restores" tools. He found a Rockwell lathe with a ton of rust on the ways, and he cleaned it up.

I've not made a secret of my disdain for rust on machine tools. It would be a highly unusual circumstance in which you'd find me paying any attention to such equipment. The power supply for my induction furnace was an example. Cosmetically it was a mess, but the motor/generator had been spared any damage. The four meters had been destroyed and had to be replaced. Water is not a friend of shop equipment.

That said, a few years back we had a nice old gentleman on the board (I no longer recall who he was) who had invested in a Southbend lathe that had been "restored". The machine looked quite nice, but was totally worthless as a lathe. He had a fixed income and could not afford to replace the junk it was. I suspect that is why he is no longer on the board.

Rust has no redeeming qualities and does considerable harm to what one pays for in precision machine tools. It is reputed to be half as deep as it is tall, so a surface with a few thousandths of rust has, for all practical purposes, lost any semblance of precision, the very thing one pays for in machine tools. That is not to say that such machines won't make chips. They most likely will, but making chips isn't really the objective in machining.

Do you happen to have a Hyacinth macaw? African gray? Sulfur crested cockatoo?

H

[whateg0]

There are a great many "restoration" videos online that display that kind of mentality.

While it may not be the precision machine it was, or should be, it is good that he's explaining the inner workings to folks that may not have had a clue before. I honestly don't mind seeing somebody "beautify" machines, or tools, if that is what makes them feel good. What I don't like is when they try to pass it off as a real restoration. But, then, who defines what a restoration entails or should entail? If a lathe bed has "x" amount of wear, and the owner has decided that it's not worth it to him to have the bed reground, did he do a restoration? Some would say no, equating a restoration, or rebuild, to a remanufacture of the machine.

Dave

[SteveHGraham]

I think a lathe like that would be dandy for wood, but it's a bummer to see someone pass it off as a metal lathe.

Harold, I have an African grey and a citron-crested cockatoo. I should never have bought them; parrots are too smart to be pets. On the up side, the eldest is 27 years old and still young for his species.

[spro]

I really "dig" certain parrots and raptors. They require a lot of interaction because they are so smart as to go loopy in boredom. -or so I've seen.
The lathe project of topic, is a bad example to doom as a "wood" lathe. I'll bet that surface rust cleaned right off and accuracy was on par or better than "new" stuff. The spindle threads you mentioned are for the lock ring. The long taper L00 nose is the register.
Try a different example with a soft bed or just flat out say that everybody should buy new Asian stuff.

[Harold_V]

I'll bet that surface rust cleaned right off and accuracy was on par or better than "new" stuff.

There is no such thing as "surface rust", although all rust appears on the surface. What's wrong with the idea that it cleaned off is that it isn't paint---it's the parent metal now in an oxidized state, and that means metal has been lost (when the rust is removed). That, then, leads to the next problem in that rust is never uniform. More metal will be lost in some areas (due to various reasons, including part of the surface being protected by hydrocarbons, or even by masking). The result is surfaces that once were flat and straight are no longer in that desirable condition. How much is the question, and how much one is willing to tolerate is the other. It reaches a point where the machine is no longer capable of performing the task it was designed to perform. Alignment is lost. At that point it makes chips, but struggles to make parts.

Do I think a new Asian machine is a better choice than a rusted, clapped out piece of junk that once had respect?

Yep, I sure do. My objective is to make parts, not chips.

That said, I would, by far, prefer a better machine--but putting lipstick on a pig doesn't make it a better pig.

H

[spro]

I respect the points you have made. I am not arguing facts but this one was the wrong example.
"rusted clapped out" who is talking that?

[spro]

Okay.There are serious machines which were put into service WW1 . Between the wars and close there was scrap drives and everything old, meaning the same way it rushes past us now, Older machinery went to scrap . Newer machines, engines by the virgin pig in America. The theme is that Japan bought loads of it and sent it back, in many ways.
That's over but many American mills and lathes served during WWI and somehow between to WWII. I think many of the rusted hulks of machines we may see..... There were guys who kept them because they knew them . Time takes tarps and time takes the men. They left the machine for you.
Please understand how often this has happened.

[spro]

How's about the best and brightest killed by another's technology. How's about this beautiful planet, eons of age over with that.ck away ..serious... done. There is something else and may be devil reaching into us by claws in the air. It becomes that the beautiful one planet must stay right.
Were it to be that planet Earth became incinerated it would disrupt the solar system as we know it.