Monarch Series 61 rebuild

Hmmm, looks like a fairly short bed, but very NICE! Is that a D1-6 spindle?

Jon

Hey Ned,

Looks great. Nice job. A few things i can't figure out what you were doing, but hey...it's great.

Brian Laws>I believe I offered up my LeBlond for sale here last spring when I

Very nice job. You've a lot more commitment than me!

Wow. You did a great clean-up/rebuild job on that machine. Lots of horse power to turn that large chuck too. Great looking machine. Dave

Ned Simmons wrote: [snip]

Very nice looking machine! It probably didn't look that nice when new.

Wes

You can't really appreciate how well a lathe is made till you see it apart. That 61 makes my 10EE look like a tinker toy. That thing was built to run 24X7 for decades and not lose any tolerance. I seen no mention of moglice or scraping etc. With your attention to detail, I assume it didn't need it.

Very nice job. I assume the chips in the pan in the last pic were from another machine. The machine is just way to purty to use now.

Karl

Ned, I thouroughly enjoyed your pictures.

Not only you have machine rebuilding skills, but you are also great at taking pictures.

i

Yes, D1-6. When I started looking I was surprised to see that the 30" center distance was very common for that model, and space is tight here. Many of the 61s must have been purchased for tool room work. The other lathe I considered was the Okuma LS, but they're rare in short beds, and even rarer with a short bed and D spindle. I do wish the Monarch had a hole thru bigger than 1-9/16".

Thanks, Wes. It was pretty ugly -- worse than it appears in the before pics. It had apparently been passed around the military and military vendors. There were property tags from the Cincinnati Ordnance District and Allison Transmissions. The guy I bought it from was a rigger who picked it up at the Watervliet Arsenal. He had it in an unheated garage for a couple years, but had the smarts to keep it slushed with grease. The coolant sump was plain disgusting.

On the other hand, it doesn't appear to have seen an awful lot of use, and had only been repainted once.

The joke here is that Monarch's solution to every design problem was either more cast iron, or another gear.

I did need to scrape the bottom of the compound turret as it was bowed. Not sure what the story was there, but there's a long thread on one of the moderated forums by a guy who went thru a similar process with a 61, and he had the same issue. My best guess is that repeated tightening of the clamping studs distorts the compound base. The compound slide itself is tight at the ends, more that I'd expect based on the appearance of the original scraping, so it's possible the distortion extends into the dovetails. I'll probably rescrape them at some point.

The crosslide gib is near the end of its adjustment range, but that'd be easy to fix with a thin layer of Turcite. It may not be necessary in my lifetime.

All in all, very good for a machine built in 1951.

I'm past worrying too much about the paint, though I'm still careful about tossing tools in the chip trays.

Den 07-02-2012 05:59, Ned Simmons skrev:

Only 1 word says it all: WOOOWWWWWWWW!!!!

Ned Simmons Inscribed thus:

Beautiful work ! Looking good.

Interesting. My Sheldon R15-6 has a 2.25" spindle through hole with a D1-6 mount. I guess the bearings on the Sheldon are bigger (they look HUGE to me!) The 6' bed on mine gives roughly 42" between centers. I know the tailstock could be allowed to overhang a bit to get slightly more, if I should ever need it.

Jon

Wow, how many years did that take? Good work, mon.

What did it take, about 5 gallons of (ick) gray and a gallon of red?

That is one monstrous machine for a HSM.

-- Energy and persistence alter all things. --Benjamin Franklin

If you look at the pic of the headstock guts you can see how the spindle tail steps down to about 2-1/4" OD outside the headstock. Between the step and the nose there's nothing to prevent the hole being much larger. Maybe Monarch figured you should buy one of their big lathes if you wanted a big hole thru. Excepting the 10EE, I think this was the smallest lathe Monarch was building at the time.

36" would fit between centers in a pinch.

6 or 7 months from purchase 'til I started using it. About 10 months all up. I'd say 200 hours over that time. 3 or 4 quarts of gray, a pint of red. A machine tool can be any color you want, as long as it's gray.

It's at home, but I get paid for most of my fun.

Yup. most of the Monarchs I have seen were pretty big! Lovely machines, too - they just LOOK good.

Jon

Nicely done Ned!! Great Work, great pictures, thanks for sharing!

(man thats a big bugger! )

If it cuts as good as it looks I'd say you got yourself a keeper.

Bob rgentry at oz dot net

Good on ya, Ned.. it appears to have been masterfully executed, great pics too.