What do I clean this with?

[Stephen Pereira]

Nice looking lathe!! The bed looks to be in excellent condition. I wish my SB Hvy 10 was in such a good shape. After you get your belt done.. I can help you with that if need be..get yourself a quickchange toolpost..Phase 11 is a good brand as far as imports go. Enco sells them..check out Shars also. Once you rid yourself of the latern toolpost you'll be happy you did.

[Matt Ranum]

Thanks Stephen. I still need to wash up the steady yet but thats for another day. Lacing the belt shouldn't be a problem as we have lacing at our farm shop. I'll look into the quick change post too.

[Stephen Pereira]

If you use Clipper lacing make sure it is#1 . Most farm lacing machines are for lacing baler belts and use #4, too big for the size of your lathe's pulley. Once you get this machine up and running there is no limit to what you can make. They say that themetal lathe is the only machine that can reproduce itself..might be a bit of a stretch.

What other tooling comes with? Steady, follower rest, faceplate?

[Matt Ranum]

It has a 3 jaw, 4 jaw, steady rest and a follower rest, threading sprockets, dead center, drill chuck, homemade faceplate, a couple homemade boring bars, and a ton of tool stock. Only problem is my current tool holders are 1/4" and a bunch of the stock is larger. Like I said in my OP, this was my Dad's until his passing. He wanted to keep his machinist tools together with the lathe and the tool box in the pic is pretty well loaded with everything from hole gauges & micro drills to depth mics & precision squares & levels, to brand new end mills and reamers. Dad liked his tools.

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[Gerald Wubs]

nice machine! I just got my Dad's 12x40 last week. He is still well, but moving to a smaller home, so I got his lathe.
I would bolt down your machine to a solid top bench at the very least. level across the ways to avoid twisting the bed. End to end level is not crucial, but the more level you get it, the better for many aspects of setup and machining.
Happy chip making
Gerald

[Bruce Page]

Matt, that cleaned up nicely! If you plan on using it very much you might think of upgrading the antiquated tool post to an indexing quick change post. You can find them reasonably priced on eBay.

[Matt Ranum]

The top I mounted the lathe to is 2x4 & 2x6's with plywood fastened to the top. I used a precision level across the ways along the whole length. It may not be perfectly level but its pretty darn close.

I'll have to look into those QC tool posts. Sounds interesting.

[Noah Bledstein]

I have a metal lathe that is close to the same size. Wal-Mart sells a large metal pan intended for use under a car while changing oil that makes a great drip pan for these smaller metal working lathes. It will make cleaning up after a project much easier.