Hi all,
I recently acquired a Drummond round bed lathe. Well, parts of. I did put an advert on homeworkshop but nobody has any spare parts or wants to buy my bits.
So, I was thinking, how hard can it be to fabricate enough bits to make it workable. Ought to be able to make a tailstock ram from a morse-taper sleeve (the ones with MT inside but parallel outsides) welded to a steel tube, threaded bar and a handwheel of some sort. And then bung on an ordinary myford/some such topslide? Does that all sound sensible?
My main questions are: the headstock mandrel; looking on lathes.co.uk, it doesn't appear to be particularly hollow, or even back-geared. Can I get away with a piece of solid bar, Myford nose thread on one end and something on the other to mount gears on? Would said bar then need to be hardened & ground to run in the original bearings? Can I bash/carefully knock out the old solid bearing and put in modern needle rollers (use less space) or taper rollers (for strength)?
And, does anyone have any drawings/plans/scrap parts/whole machine lying about I can take measurements from and photos of?
I'm not really looking to do this machine up for cash, I've seen complete ones sell on the dread eBay for a ton or less, but the father in law has been looking for a cheep lathe for a while.
Thanks,
Ed