12" working railroad

[Glenn Brooks]

Interesting. I’ve only seen v belt drives coming off the motor to the big drive pulley on the tower. I tired a link belt couple of times - twice I think - never could get them to work properly. Do went back to v belts and automotive serpentine for the flats. My link belts might have been cheapo harbor freight gardening stuff...

Which ever way you go, likely to work out very well.

Curious why SB v belt pulleys never caught on...

Glenn

[rkcarguy]

I’ve used the sectional link belts a few times. The trick is they have to be broken in and then retensioned or they slip. I ended up getting a 1/2” Fennel brand belt from Grizzly tools. tomorrow after work I’m going to bolt it down and start putting things together. Hoping to be up and running by the weekend.

[Glenn Brooks]

Sounds great. You may know this already, if not, Ted at:

Latheman2@aol.com

is the go to guy for NOS South Bend parts. He might have change gears-maybe...

Glenn

[rkcarguy]

I ordered a few more goodies last night, specific to my projects. I got a couple of MT2 -5/8-Fine Thread arbors for the tailstock. This will allow me to bolt up my flange plate and mount a pillow block to carry the end of my wheelsets instead of relying on a live center.
I'm not too worried about the feeds and speeds right now, will basically be flipping the compound around and cutting the various angles with hand feed anyway.
If I start roughing wheels on it, it will be nice to have the power feed. I'll have to get the tooth counts from the gears and see what feed ranges I have the capability of doing.

[Glenn Brooks]

truthfully, I almost never change my speed setting on my small 7" lathe. around 200-300 RPM will do almost anything in that size range... your right about the hand feed work with wheels... have fun!

[rkcarguy]

truthfully, I almost never change my speed setting on my small 7" lathe. around 200-300 RPM will do almost anything in that size range... your right about the hand feed work with wheels... have fun!

I was thinking that myself, I generally use 280 rpm on the big lathe and then switch it to it's lowest speed only when I power tap. Not sure I'll be trying to power tap on this little guy!

[rkcarguy]

I got the bench beefed up and the lathe mounted to it tonight, and worked on the wiring a little. Reverse worked but not forward, and it seems to me it's not wired right and it's missing a jumper wire on the motor. I ran out of time so I'll need to get the voltmeter out and see if I can figure it out.

[rkcarguy]

The lathe is up and running. The rotary switch was wired totally wrong and the motor that came with it was weak, so I upgraded to a 1HP motor. Just need to finish up my T-nut for the QCTP and It'll be time to make some test cuts.

[rkcarguy]

Some pictures. The cover for the electrical connections didn’t clear the belt, so I’ll need to make a flat one. Otherwise the 1hp motor bolted right up in place of the old 1/3hp. The last picture is how I’m putting together a support for the other end of my wheel sets.

[Glenn Brooks]

Looks like the original finish. Is that flaking on the ways?

[rkcarguy]

The ways have some sort of finish pattern to them that has some consistency to it, I'm not sure if that was factory to hold oil or if someone else did that. Nothing is flaking off there is no coating on them, just cast iron. I can't discern any difference in the finish feeling it with my "machinist finger".
Paint is original and in need of some cleaning, but it's all oiled up and ready to make parts.

[Glenn Brooks]

By flaking I meant the characteristic swirl pattern the factory used to scrape onto the machined surfaces. The flaking pattern was used to hold pockets of waymoil on the bed to lubricate the saddle and tailstoxk as it moved back and forth. It goes over the actual scraping pattern they used to create actual flatness of the beds and ways. If these are very consistent and finely scraped into the surface - like a repeating art pattern- you might have a lathe that still exhibits the original factory trued surface! My 1929 SB 9 still has these flaking marks. Unbelievable but sometimes these old barn finds still show up.