Big American Iron!

I got really sick of breaking stuff on my cheezy Harbor Frieght mini-lathe. It even arrived with broken plastic handles that I had to repair before I could even use it. It didn't take long before the electronic speed control took a dump, then the drive belt broke -- and it's a wierd metric size that nobody's ever seen -- and the final straw was when I finally got a new belt installed, and turned it on. The chuck moved 1/4", struck the cross slide and promptly split the nylon hi-lo gears in half... both of them. I just recently bought new gears -- a set to go in the lathe, and 2 spare sets. You'd think it was a race bike.



I looked on e-bay for several months, perusing the selection of metal lathes, and had just about given up on finding a suitable lathe. My friend Mark, a huge machine tool fanatic -- both in the sense that he loves machine tools and the bigger they are, the more he loves them -- turned me on to a lathe on e-bay. I was the only person to bid on it, and won the auction at the opening bid price. My friend YT and his big-ass Ford deisel van volunteered to do the road trip to pick up the lathe all the way in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was also very generous in allowing me to store and disassemble it in his garage.



Getting it into the basement was a frightening job! I was pretty convinced that the old wooden stairs might collapse under the load. That was the biggest reason for disassembling it. Assembled, it weighs about as much as my car and my motorcycle, combined. We rented a U-Haul refrigerator dolly, and while moving the bed/headstock combination, the stairs were creaking loudly.



It is a Cincinatti Tray-Top lathe, and I suspect that it was considered a tool-room unit. I have not done much research as to the exact date of manufacture. They were built, as near as I can tell, from about 52' to 59'. It's a smaller lathe, 12.5" swing and 18" between centers, but has lots of big-lathe features. It's most prominent feature is the massive construction - enormous cast bases, very deep walls on the bed, and virtually everything is metal - there is just one solitary knob made of plastic.

Not only does it have the usual axial (lengthwise) power feed, but it also has radial (crosswise) power feed. This will advance the cutting tool into the work automatically for facing operations. There are 3 gearboxes, which all run in oil, on this machine: the main geared head, which controls the speed of the workpiece, a lead screw gearbox, which controls the speed of the tool, and a gearbox on the compound for the radial feed. Also fascinating is the oiling system: it's called a one-shot oiler, and with the push of a single plunger, oil is distributed to all of the wear points on the lathe, hence the excellent condition.



I've torn this thing into many, many tiny -- and not so tiny -- pieces. I've stripped the paint off most of it. A couple of interesting discoveries: at one point, it was labeled #7, and the handles were yellow. I dig the yellow handles, and I'll honor that history when I paint it. I've begun to prime the smaller bits. Someday, I'll actually get the old gal fully restored and operational again.