A while back I posted a few questions here about an old sheldon lathe i had a chance to get. Well it followed me home a few days ago. Pics are in the dropbox at:
Sheldon1.jpg & sheldon2.jpg - a couple of front views
Sheldon3.jpg -- a closeup of the nameplate
sheldon4_drive.jpg -- a closeup of the under the cabinet drive
All of the brown rust on it is just surface stuff. Most of it cleaned off after letting it sit for a day with some oil on it and a good wiping off. What did not come off cleaned up with a swipe of two of green scotch-brite pad. It has a crummy second-hand paint job.
This lathe was bought up from a company in NJ that made vacuum tubes that closed down. When it did, a guy bought all of the gear and moved it all to southern NH. It sat there in a dry barn, along with the rest of the stuff, for over 20 years, as I understand.
I would guess that this machine was not used as a production lathe. The ways are flat, no ridge, no dings and some of the flaking is still visable on much of them. No broken or missing gear teeth and everything moved first try with finger power. When I moved the carrige over, there was still oil on the ways under it.
The motor is obviously not original. The fwd/rev drum switch was not hooked up, and the motor is only 1/2 HP. It is installed with a slightly mickey moused bracket. that will have to go.
I did not do a tear down at this point, but I cleaned all of the gak off, and lubed everything up. i checked out the motor to make sure that it posed no shock hazard, replaced the cord and tried powering it up. While the motor has a hard time getting everything fully up to speed, espically at the higher spindle speeds, this machine runs nice. Smooth and quiet.
Any idea what would be an appropriate sized motor for this lathe? My old Taiwan Jet 10" has a 1.5HP, but those are chinese horsepower. Any other advice with respect to getting this back to full operation? Does one "flush out" bearings (I'm not exactly sure what I mean by that) before running an old machine like this? Any other thoughts?
Thanks, AL