Jet 1221VS stand assembly issues

[Jim Laumann]

I bought a 1221 and stand on Black Friday - taking advantage to the price breaks Jet was offering at that time. Due to a variety of reasons, they have been sitting in their cartons, untouched until today. I started the stand assembly of the stand, and that's when I had issues.

The base of the legs are tapped with a M12x1.75P thread, with corresponding bolts. The kicker was, the bolts would not thread in to the holes, or cross-threaded if they did manage to start. I have some metric fasteners on hand, but nothing in the 12mm range, and with it being New Years, there aren't a lot of stores open for replacements, if I was so inclined, which I wasn't.

I looked closely at the threads in the legs, and there appeared to be globs in each. Paint should have been cut by the bolts, so there was something else there. I have a set of thread repair taps /dies I bought years back to fix a lawn mower issue. Got those out, ran them thru the legs and the bolts. Both legs produced slivers of steel about 1/4-5/16" long. The bolts were black, but each of them had a thread which turned silver after I used the die on them.

Once this was done, the bolts threaded fine.

A couple of other oddities - the assembly instructions make no mention of the cross brace between the legs. It's shown in the parts list, but you are never told to install it. Another is the fact that some of the supplied hardware (screws) is threaded for 5/16"x18 threads, with a recess in the top of the screw for a allen (hex) key, in 5mm.

Got the lathe on it, fastened down, and that's all I had time to do - more tonight I hope.

Jim

[Charles Bjorgen]

I got the same setup as a Chistmas present to myself and also noticed the absence of any reference to the cross bar in the included printed instructions. However, while waiting for delivery, I had downloaded the manuals for both the lathe and stand and found the online versions to be correct. I had no difficulties with screw threads other than some paint buildup in the threaded holes that had to be removed. This is a very nice small lathe setup.

[Dave Fritz]

I recently got a bench top joiner from Grizzly and it two extra parts. When I called the company they said, "Oh, some other tool must be short something." Quality control?

Dave Fritz

[david privett]

just to be sure verify the thread pitch and then chase the threads wit a tap , sometimes if you can get at the backside of the hole start the tap from there just go slow at first to make sure the threads align. You can also chase the threads of the bolt with a die ,if you do that I do not know of a reason that it will not bolt up easy, unless clearances in the holes are wrong.

[John K Jordan]

just to be sure verify the thread pitch and then chase the threads wit a tap

Something I've done for years when I didn't have the right tap on hand: Use a small triangular file to cut several sharp-sided grooves across the threads near the end of a bolt. This almost always works as a cheap tap to clean up holes.

A metal-cutting disk to grind grooves on a hardened bolt works even better but usually not needed.

JKJ

[Don Jarvie]

How about trying a pipe cleaner like you would use for copper pipe? The bristles are pretty stiff. I use them to clean screw holes on machines to clear the gunk out.