An improved cap screw for planes

[george wilson]

Now that I have made a cap screw,and gotten back into it,I remember that I forgot to turn down the end of the screw that contacts the plane iron. It is on the way to David. David,you need to bevel the end of the screw or it will soon flare a bit,and be impossible to unscrew from the hole it threads into. I'll send you this new screw also.

Someone was asking about my lathe. Here it is,all covered with chips and tools. I have been busy at it lately,having made 52 bezels for new jewelry models,and the 2 new cap screws in the past few days.

Behind the lathe,and screwed to it,is a tool cupboard I made of white pine. It has a french polished finish of Siam seedlac,which,unlike regular shellacs,never goes dull,and adds a very nice color. The bottoms of the shelves have stainless steel protectors slid over them,to keep the inevitable oil and chips from damaging the wood.

Seen sticking vertically through holes in the top shelf,are some freehand turning tools such as I use to make the contoured parts of the cap iron.

It has all the 5C collets from 1/64" up to 1 1/8". I worked of it off and on for about 3 years to get it nice,so I could pile things on it!! The blue motor seen below the collets is a rotary phase converter to supply 3 phase to the lathe.

I have had this lathe for only the past relatively few years. The work I did on the tools such as the dovetailed planes(with their cap irons),and the bronze drill,were made either with a miserable Atlas lathe,or with a 10" Jet which was my next lathe for several years.

[Rick Markham]

That's a beautiful piece of equipment, even with stuff piled on it. I've come across a couple of them for sale online since we chatted about lathes, and your definitely right they are quite pricey. Certainly a great piece of engineering, they even are aesthetically pleasing to my eye. Occasionally a hardinge chuck pops up on craigslist around here.

[george wilson]

They are very beautiful lathes. Very highly praised on "Griffiths Engineering" website.

They quit making them,I believe,last year. They got ghastly expensive. Some clones are made in Taiwan,but not as nice as the real thing. It has a 1 h.p. motor as big as a 10 h.p. motor. Built to run forever. This one is a 1964. I think the government must have replaced anything worn on it,as it has hardly any backlash anywhere.

These lathes were made with class 9 bearings!! I can stand a nickel on edge,and start and stop the lathe,and run it from 130 to 3000 rpm and back without the nickel falling over. Actually,have done it with a penny,too.

[Rick Markham]

That's incredibly impressive, I'm not surprised they ended up being ghastly expensive if they maintained that level of quality until they stopped making them. The couple that I have seen looked like yours, they didn't have a date attached to them, and certainly weren't as tidy as yours is. The asking price was that of a new small car lol. From what I could tell they were being sold by industry and not a private owner so I'm sure they had lived very busy hard lives. I thought it was interesting, none the less, and will always keep my eyes open for one regardless. My suspicions are if anyone is selling one, they always knows exactly what they are worth, and now that they aren't made anymore they will only become more expensive. I don't get the impression they show up at estate sales too often :rolleyes:

That's a real beauty George, thanks for sharing it with us.

[David Weaver]

excellent :D

I'd say I wish I had a lathe like that (well, I do, I guess), but I would be obligated to learn to use it if I did.

It is a very fine looking lathe, nicer than anything I have seen on craigslist here. It's no surprise that it's refurbished that nicely given who it belongs to.

(I'm semi-shocked that they were still making them as recently as last year).

[george wilson]

The clones are about $20,000. I think real ones were $60,000 when they quit. I hope nothing goes wrong with this one. I couldn't afford to fix it!!

By a fluke,I got this one cheap. A decent used one would have to be about $15,000,or it would be worn out. New bearings would be well over $2000 for the headstock,and you must send them the headstock so they can properly pre load the bearings.

[Rick Markham]

I wanna say the ones I saw online were around $17,000 to $18,000, and didn't look like they were "only driven on sundays" :D

[David Weaver]

Pricewise, totally different ballgame than I was even aware of.

I'm sure it's due to a level of precision that I'm also not aware of or able to comprehend.

[george wilson]

New ones have spindles true to 50 millionths. I don't have instruments that can measure how close this one runs,but it makes beautiful finishes. Every thing is independently variable speed. On regular lathes,the speeds of the feeds are tied to the spindle feed by gears.

That little black motor attached to the spindle has variable speed,so even when the lathe is running 3000 rpm,it can feed fast,or barely crawl along,making very tiny cutting tracks in the work that barely need polishing.

[Leigh Betsch]

The Hardinge is just about the finest toolroom lathes made in my opinion. They don't hog very well but you gotta love single point threading with them. And the finishs are just excellent if you know what you are doing. Makes my '28 SB overhead drive look a little outclassed!

[dan sherman]

And it makes my HF 8x14 look like garbage, but I was still able to make these (inserts for my benchdog) on over the last few days.



The Hardinge is just about the finest toolroom lathes made in my opinion. They don't hog very well but you gotta love single point threading with them. And the finishs are just excellent if you know what you are doing. Makes my '28 SB overhead drive look a little outclassed!

[David Weaver]

If I figure correctly, 50 millionths is just a tad over a micron.

No wonder it polishes so well, its accuracy is about the same as the grain size of a very fine polishing stone.

Never heard accuracy for machine work described in units less than a ten thousandth before.

[george wilson]

Nicely restored lathe,Leigh. Nice size shop,too. You also have the taper attachment,too.I see you have an Oliver wood lathe with cast iron legs. I have a later model from the 50's or 60's. I had an older model with cast legs,and a BIG motor on the headstock that used its shaft as the arbor.
The motor didn't run,so I got rid of it,and was going to make a headstock for it. Then,this later oliver came along. I had to get rid of the older one for lack of space.

No,the Hardinge wasn't made for hogging. It is more like an over sized jeweler's lathe. I can still take a cut about 1/8" off steel with no problem. The lathe has clutches in its apron to keep it from becoming overloaded,though. Heavy cuts are for my 16" lathe.

[Leigh Betsch]

I sold the Oliver to another Creeker, still kicking myself for that! It had a bunch of tooling, all original. But I don't like wood turning much. Now I'm thinking about mounting a router to my SB to cut some big wood screws. But that's another projet that I need like a hole in my head.
I need new spindle bearings for the SB, difficult to get good finishes and hold much for tolerances. I'll probably send the headstock out and have it linebored and new bearing put in. I keep looking for a cheap Hardinge or a Monarch 10EE but then again those can be full time projects. But that's another forum!

[george wilson]

I had a nice 10EE,but the drive mechanism is so complicated I took it back. I'm not much of an electrician,and you need a real tech to manage those 10ee's.

The Hardinge has a simple,mechanical means of varying the spindle speed. It does have a formidable bank of relays that I hope don't go bad!! Truly!! My journeyman,Jon has an older model that quit working,and he can't find anyone who can fix it.

[george wilson]

Leigh,does your South Bend have bronze bearings,or the bearings just bored out of the solid cast iron? I hope not just the solid type. We had an old South Bend in the maintenance shop at Williamsburg. It wouldn't turn well(they said). Finally,the maintenance guys asked me to look at the old lathe. I put a crowbar and wooden block under its chuck. The spindle would lift 1/8 INCH!!!

Hoe it was ever allowed to get that was I'll never know. It certainly would have ceased being usable long before that.

They never oiled it,I am sure. It is possible that the electricians could have used it to coil long wires. One of them did get me to make him some spools full of wire with my lathe.

Well,of course,the old lathe had bearings bored from the solid. I think that was poor engineering on South Bend's part. Myford may have used that on the ML10,a very basic lathe. They said the bearings would last 30 years IF you kept them oiled. O.K.,30 years goes by,then what?

Even if you got your lathe line bored,you would have to get the tailstock realigned with the height of the spindle.

Years ago,I rebuilt lathes. One was a 10" Rockwell that had belonged to Williamsburg. It looked quite nice,but the bed and the slides were completely worn out. This lathe WOULD NOT CUT METAL.

It had been used for years as a polishing lathe. The ball bearing centers that came with it had heavy metal housings around the ball bearings. You could see the BALLS of the ball bearings where the housings,and the outer race of the bearings had been completely sanded through by years of use.

I had to re cut the bed,and re cut the cross slide dovetails. The tailstock ram was so loose it would not lock with the locking lever. It was really badly out of line from sliding over grit.

I lightly clamped it in place IN FRONT of the carriage,put a boring bar in the chuck,and power fed the tailstock slowly over the rotating boring bar. After it was bored out,I made a larger dia. tailstock quill. I had to make a short left hand thread Acme tap to tap the hole for the tailstock screw. After installing the ram,I reamed the #2 M.T. hole with a reamer.

The Quick change gearbox,leadscrew,and half nuts were like new. I doubt they ever made a thread with it.

I had to lower the gearbox and leadscrew bracket after re cutting the bed.

It was a nice little lathe after that. I had taken off the top of the carriage,recutting the dovetail crossfeed just a tiny bit,until the lathe would face quite flat. It was probably more accurate than new,as they usually feed a bit hollow. That might be good when making flanges,but I like my lathes to face flat.

My 16" lathe is only a Grizzly,but it does turn dead true,and face dead flat. An unusually accurate lathe.

[Johnny Kleso]

Sweet Lathe George..

[Leigh Betsch]

George, my SB does have bronze bearings so at least they are replaceable. The spindle is scored, looks like some bozo ran it dry for quite a while. It's got about .002 radial clearance. Now it goes thru oil like crazy. When I rebuilt it I ran short of money so I didn't have it linebored, but I got a quote for $400 to linebore and replace the bearings. I think that is a good price, just hasn't been a big priority latley.
Now I better say something neander or I'll be in trouble with the moderators so... chisel, waterstone, LV, LN, Hock, Stanley, A2, O1, ;)