South Bend Restoration

to start with.

What exactly are you planning to do with it? If your restoration is cosmetic, no problem. If the headstock spindle is bent or the bearings are shot, you have a difficult problem.

Many techniques have been discussed exhaustively. You may find it worthwhile to google groups on such topics as painting machinery or machinery restoration.

I don't think anyone is going to write you a Chilton's manual step by step. If you plan to be a machinist, you're supposed to be able to figure this stuff out. A South Bend lathe is a simple machine once you understand it.

Grant Erwin

I don't necessarily need a Chilton's type guide, I guess. I was just wondering if there is one type of book out there. I saw a couple of websites that were pretty good at showing the restorations and talking about it. I can't find them for some reason.

I'm a babe in the woods when it comes to the names of parts on lathes. I just ordered the recommended books on the

website so I feel that will give me a great start.

To tell the truth, I don't plan to be a machinist. I am a mechanical designer/drafter and I see the type of work that the machinists do all day and I don't want that as a career. It wouldn't be for me. However, I do want a decent lathe for making parts at home and I do want to understand more how parts are made and what the equipment is and is not capable of doing. I feel it will make me a better designer, plus I need to make parts for myself. For instance, the hydraulic pump shaft on the front of my Ford

3000 tractor just went out and I needed to make a new shaft. I had to have the guys in our machine shop make me one. I would've liked to make one myself.

So that's where I'm at; I just wanted to restore the 10" South Bend that I just bought. I think I'll just tear into it when I'm ready and if I get stuck I'll ask more specific questions to you all.

Thanks for listening,

Relz

If you can find a copy, the South Bend parts manual contains several pages of testing and assembly instructions.

"Keep Your Lathe In Trim" is a good source for operator-level adjustments.

I made most of the parts my lathe needed on it, once it ran. A few required digging through dealer's junk piles. I bring a spindle thread copy made of 2" pipe and a Morse #2 sleeve when shopping.

jw

Check out the Home Shop Machinist. There was a 4 part series on "Reconditioning a Lathe" starting in September/October 2004 that was pretty good from what I recall. See if you can take a peek at the library, if you like the detail you can order back issues. Also, The author is Harry Bloom (you might be able to contact him directly (through HSM) for a reprint).

Cheers

John Chicago Far West Burbs

The South Bend user group on Yahoo has a lot of resources. The format is a PITA, but there is a lot of good stuff and good people, including a few from this newsgroup. Just hard to find and wade through. No wonder Google is kicking their ass!