I fially did it

[IcerUSA]

went and perchased a lathe :) Will be going to pick it up on tuesday, good price I think and of corse with the price will come a little parts ordering, but that I can handle :)

Here she is :

4053

Now to find someplace to put it, might have to clear off the tool boxes on the bench . hehehe
plus my spelling sucks LOL

[Frank46]

IcerUSA, welcome to the club. Its a nice machine and the best part is that you can make just WHAT you want. WHEN you want. The capitals are intended. I frequent the local scrap yards and you never know what you'll find. Some time ago I bought a 30" longx 3"dia piece of brass for a buck a pound. Which worked out to $60 bucks total. Now if you looked it up in a metals catalog it would cost way more than that. Now you'll have to get the following catalogs, Enco, Grizzly, McMaster-Carr, MSC, and a few others. Why? you ask?. Cause when you see them you'll get such a case of "Gimmes" it'll drive you nuts. All kidding aside those catalogs are like the Sears wishbook. After you read them you'll agree. Have fun, Frank

[floodgate]

Icer:

I would add to Frank46's list of sources Micro-Mark <www.micromark.com>. They offer a lot of accessories for those compact 7" lathes (looks like that is what you got), including conversion lead and cross-feed screws calibrated to inch dimensions. They also offer a matching tilting-column mill that uses many of the same accessories. You DO realize, of course, that within a year you will have twice the price of the machine tied up in tooling.

Welcome to the club!

floodgate

[ARKANSAS PACKRAT]

Icer; Floodgate's correct about tooling costs, but only if you don't buy a larger lathe in the next year!!!!!!!!![smilie=1: This is a loooong slippery slope you're on!! I've got three now, going to an auction Sat looking at a mill, here we go again?!
Enjoy!:mrgreen:
Nick

[Buckshot]

..............Looks like you got one of the 9"x18"s or 20"? Do a web search using either 9x18 or 9x20 and you'll come up with quite a bit of stuff. There are quite a few improvements guys do to them. Hopefully you got the change gears with it? It looks like the lever for the half nuts is missing???

Yup, everyone is right. It's a black hole for money, or can be depending how far you wanna go. "Lemme be the first to HEP ya out :-)". You need to get a QC tool post and holders, first thing! Well actually first thing is you need to get a gallon of Way Oil and a gallon of spindle oil.

Just so you'll have it, the free shipping code for June from Enco is: WBJR7

That's for orders over $50.

..............Buckshot

[Buckshot]

.............What's nice about having a lathe is all the stuff you can do. As an example I had to buy a new air compressor a couple weeks ago. It's a 30 gallon upright and it's supposed to be portable. I say supposed to be because they put these stupid little 4" wheels on it. You have to lay it down so low to pull it it's like you're doing the limbo, or I guess you could put on your kneepads or crawl while pulling it.

Well Harbor Freight had 8" inflateable tires with rims and bearings on sale for $4.99 each so I got 2 of'em. I suppose I could have stopped someplace and bought a couple 5/8" bolts, washers and nuts for axles, but I didn't. Because I have a LATHE! :-) The holes in the brackets welded to the tank are prolly 13mm or just a tad over 1/2".

I stuck a piece of 5/8" CRS in the chuck and turned the end down to 0.496", then pulled 3" of it out of the chuck and parted it off. Then I did it again. Then each piece got put back into the chuck and had the reduced part threaded 1/2-13. From the "Spare Parts" box I got a stubby piece of 1" 12L14 steel. Faced it, centerdrilled it, drilled it through with a half inch bit and then a 5/8" bit. I then parted off 4 nice chunky axle washers.

Got that all installed with the wheels on. The front feet are now about 3" above the ground. I unbolted the rubber feet they had attached to 2 brackets. Got a piece of 3/4" OD steel and parted off 2 three inch pieces. Chucked each piece and drilled for a 1/4-20 tap on both ends of each piece and tapped them. Attached a rubber foot to one end of each and bolted t'other end to the existing brackets. Took maybe 30 minutes.

Today I bought one of those automatic water ejector deals to replace the drain plug on the bottom of the tank. It plumbs into the line to the pressure switch so everytime the compressor starts or shuts off the ejector goes, PSSSSSSSST. HA! Everything was jake until I looked at the brass 'T' fitting they supplied. Each leg has a teet on it to fit the supplied plastic hose that goes from the valve to the pressure switch. As it happens the line on the compressor I had to splice into is copper pipe.

I have a TON of brass fittings, but the only "T" I had was for 5/16 tube and the compressor has pipe close to 1/4" going to the switch. I suppose I could have run down to Lowes for one, but I have a LATHE! :-). One leg of the "T" was going to use the plastic tube to go to the automatic drain valve, so it was okay. The other 2 legs had to be modified. So I chucked up one leg in the lathe and drilled a 1/4" hole all the way through and out the other side, killing 2 teets at once.

The idea was to use compression rings on the pipe (those I have oodles of). I figured a regular 60* centerdrill would suffice to match the angle of the compression rings, so each leg got hit a lick with that to put a bevel on. Spliced into the copper pipe, put in the compression rings and cinched down the nuts. Works like a champ!

.................Buckshot

[IcerUSA]

Got her home and it has all the stuff that HF shows plus a few other things, some brazed tool bits and boreing bars, the gentalman also gave me the bench it was on. Nedds a little work but what used equipment don't when you get it ? Not much that I have seen :). The 4 jaw chuck looks to be an after market 6" that looks almost new, so that is a plus . Need to get it all cleaned up and checked out, get some oil for it. One of the first projects will be to make a collet chuck for it as I have some C5 and C4 collets that I can use. Man-O-Man is that to do list going to get big now LOL