Lathe No2 Up for Sale!

It had to happen - not enough room to keep both lathes, need to get some money back after the extravigant spending!
The Ebay link is http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140013563188

Im selling it as a plain lathe, with a very low start. It needs the apron as I have transferred that to Lathe no 1, and there are no chucks or toolpost with it, but would be a good start for sometone wanting to restore or needing spares.

Live Centre

I bought one new from ebay - paid £10 plus £4 postage. If I looked a little harder there was one for £2 postage. Oh Well. Lets hope they have the precision I need as I guess they will be China's finest
As it has a no2 Morse taper, that is probably all I need for the crank work. Oh and a working lathe without backlash. Still need to learn how to cut tapers, but The nut threads could be sorted later when I have all the back gearing and change wheels sorted....

Morse Taper Sleeves and Ebay

I won a set of morse taper sleeves - 1:2, 2:3, 3:4 ,4:5 on Ebay for £3.19 plus £5.50 postage, bargain. I already have a 1:2 MT sleeve for use with the drill bit chuck, but I have realised I have no chuck key!

Also, there are TWO Raglan lathes on Ebay right now - probably gone if you are looking at the archives.

One is a LittleJohn for £350, reseve not yet met but it has all the chucks, changewheels and steadies.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&&item=110012046893

The other looks like a very shiny Raglan 5" with built in Gearbox, currently £10 reserve not met.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250012099259

It will be interesting to see what these go for....

Changewheels

A bit of investigation found a very useful page at
http://www.oldengine.org/members/diesel/Tables/Mech1.htm
look in the corner..

I asked on the Raglan list on yahoogroups.com how many 48t gears I should have - I have five currently. I was told only one!!
The info above makes it clearer that for english threads, a pair of 48th gears should be behind on the X and Y positions, so in reality a LittleJohn is supplied with 3off 48t. I suspect that most users on the discussion board are not interested in cutting metric trheads, so they leave the 52t and 44t gears alone.
I made a PDF of the useful pages on oldengine for convenience Here.
Thwere is still the problem of 0.8mm threads, common on Japanese motorcycles....

Face Plate

Collected the Four jaw chuck, fixed 3 point steady and also purchased a face plate, fixed drill bit chuck on a no 1 MT and a n-1 to No 2 MT sleeve, all for £50, tops! The guy also had an original Raglan 3 point fixed steady and two point travelling steady, but as they are rare he wanted a bit much for that - better leave it to the collectors.
I also changed the idler gears yesterday on lathe NO 1 from lathe No 2 - a bit silly, as they are brass, but you loosen the variable speed driven pulley and remove the main lathe shaft (that teh chuck screws on to) in order to get the arm loose, kind of like removing the house roof in order to change a lightbulb.

Four Jaw and Fixed Steady

Just won a nice 8" Pratt Bernhard four jaw chuck and 3 point fixed steady off ebay. The four jaw does not have a backplate, and the fixed stead is only 5" so will need a spacer plate to set correct centre height.
I am also trying to sort out a face plate, bit to bolt something to and also for the 8" chuck.

Lathe Number One

Finally managed to pay some attention to lathe number one. The rotary switch system is a bit well worn, so will use the Kraus switch on this lathe, which I itned to keep.
I asked the Raglan group at www.yahoogroups.com about the original motor, and was told it should be fine. As it is 0.5hp I will keep this, compared to the 1/2 hp motor on lathe two, which is admittadely newer.
The picture under the cover shows the problems with the reverse tumbler gears for the power feed.
Cleaning up the missing gears looks good apart from the main idler that meshes with the mainshaft - this is good from Lathe number two, as are the tumbler gears.
Additionally, this lathe contains extra gears not included with lathe Two. Next week, I will heave to decide which of the gears to keep, and which to let go with lathe Two.
I also managed to get a selection of 10mm square tools and a little tool holder :-
These were a bargain at £5 plus postage. I will probably let the tool holder go with Lathe Two, but it will neet a bracket making which I probably wont get around to making.

Progress

Didn't get any chance to work on these beauties for a while as I've been away on work. Anyhow, yesterday and today, I wired up some nice 4 core plus earth to Lathe number two.

The switch box I scrounged has also been wired up, so this enables switched motor control rather than using the mains plug as before. I contacted Santon and they said the switch I have is very old, and they also dont usually supply switch component parts, so I just used the switch as a simple ON/OFF switch, hardwired at the motor for forward. If someone wants, they could use the 4 core plus earth wire I provided and get a 4 pole centre off switch to get both forward and reverse.
There look to be some compatible Santon switches on Ebay at the minute:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220007826492

I wondered about buying them but If I am just going to sell there is little point. Soemone has already bid with 5 days at £9 and as it says Myford in the title will probably go for £100 or something silly like that.

New Switch

I bought a nice Kraus four pole, double throw centre off switch from Ebay for £3 plus £3 postage. Bargain, now I don't have to struggle with the Santon switch from the skip. I can still use the housing and cable glands etc, but this is for motor number two.
Motor one on Lathe one, yet to be described in detail, has a built in rotary switch and loose wiring. Both motors really need a no-volt switch - still in development....

Switches

The Rotary switch recovered from the skip is a Santon RS-125. This is a multi-stackable system that contains rotary wafers with 180 degree contacts across the centre and a single 90 degree contact on the right, so to speak, rated at 10A @ 250V. The switch contained four switch wavers, and six contacts. Adding up, we need 2 wafer contactors for one field winding, and four rotary wafers for the forward/reverse (each waver switches live, another switches neutral for each end of the winding) other winding, making six rotary wafers and 10 contacts. Hmm, problem. The previous application only switched two the motor in a single direction as none, one, other, both.
I spent a long time messing about - I could only use a single rotary wafer with switched live for one winding, but still need four wafers for the forward/reverse winding. I dont like that idea, so wondered about modifying the rotary wafers so they just had 90 degree contacts, and each wafer could then switch both live and neutral. The problem with this is that in one configuration there is no off, and the other the switching goes forward, reverse, off - so to turn off from forward means you crashing through reverse at 1425rpm - not good.
I could make up some brass contacts out of 47thou sheet, but I still dont have enough wafers.
More to come....