British empire lathe

[God mode restorations]

Out of interest, does cleaning the ways with a wire brush act as a detrimental action to the lathe if you go on to scrape it anyway? Or should you still use fine wire wool/scotch pads?

I use very fine wire wool and sometimes use scotch brite depending on the amount I need to clean up. On ways it wouldn't do damage unless you kept doing it for hours

 

[Pete.]

If you're scraping the ways you can clean them with whatever you like (not an angle grinder). Scraping removes the surface of the metal.

 

[decca]

Today I started the task of scraping all the carriage parts. Starting with the cross slide. A few more passes and a couple of clean up passes should see it good.View attachment 160984

Looks fantastic. Pure skill in this rebuild.

 

[God mode restorations]

Looks fantastic. Pure skill in this rebuild.

Thanks decca.

 

[God mode restorations]

Today's task was to cut the reliefs in the dovetails before scraping. And make a start on the scraping.

 

[Pete.]

Nice. Cutting those reliefs is essential as it's nigh on impossible to scrape the dovetail ways without ending up with a rising edge where the points meet.

 

[God mode restorations]

Nice. Cutting those reliefs is essential as it's nigh on impossible to scrape the dovetail ways without ending up with a rising edge where the points meet.

Yes definitely. Time consuming. Other side now done.

 

[God mode restorations]

Just set this little jig up to get a sensible angle . Almost done this side but forgot to take a pic.

 

[Pete.]

Make sure before you scrape the dovetails that you measure across them with pins. Now that you have the bottom ways flat and co-planar you'll have to correct for any wear during this round of scraping. No sense doing a bang-up job of scraping the ways only to find that they are 2 thou wider in the middle, or at one end.

 

[pressbrake1]

Make sure before you scrape the dovetails that you measure across them with pins. Now that you have the bottom ways flat and co-planar you'll have to correct for any wear during this round of scraping. No sense doing a bang-up job of scraping the ways only to find that they are 2 thou wider in the middle, or at one end.

people get carried away forgetting the idea of scraping is for alignment! Id have the headstock back on and aligned to the bed before I touched the cross slide as Dr Schlesinger would advise

 

[God mode restorations]

people get carried away forgetting the idea of scraping is for alignment! Id have the headstock back on and aligned to the bed before I touched the cross slide as Dr Schlesinger would advise

Fear not young man....All will be good

 

[Pete.]

The left inverted dovetail way on the cross-slide is about the only part of the sliding assembly I give any real attention to on a lathe as far as alignment is concerned. It's what controls the direction of travel of the cross-slide and if you scrape it wrong you can end up facing convex. A little concavity is tolerable, but convex is not at all. The problem is that you need ways in fairly good condition to even check it. If they are a long way out even your investigation can give false results.

Here's what I'd do:
Level the bed
Align the headstock by turning a parallel part
Face a shallow disc in the chuck with a thin proud lip on the periphery
Place a parallel across the lips, this will ALWAYS be perpendicular to the spindle centre-line regardless of the state of the machine.
Run a DTI along the parallel to gauge the cross-slide alignment. If it sweeps front-back with the needle falling you're turning convex. Step-scrape the ways to turn the cross-slide to square or a couple of tenths concave.

 

[God mode restorations]

The left inverted dovetail way on the cross-slide is about the only part of the sliding assembly I give any real attention to on a lathe as far as alignment is concerned. It's what controls the direction of travel of the cross-slide and if you scrape it wrong you can end up facing convex. A little concavity is tolerable, but convex is not at all. The problem is that you need ways in fairly good condition to even check it. If they are a long way out even your investigation can give false results.

Here's what I'd do:
Level the bed
Align the headstock by turning a parallel part
Face a shallow disc in the chuck with a thin proud lip on the periphery
Place a parallel across the lips, this will ALWAYS be perpendicular to the spindle centre-line regardless of the state of the machine.
Run a DTI along the parallel to gauge the cross-slide alignment. If it sweeps front-back with the needle falling you're turning convex. Step-scrape the ways to turn the cross-slide to square or a couple of tenths concave.

I am sure once it's all done there indeed will be adjustments needed and sorted.

 

[God mode restorations]

One part sorted. On with the next.

 

[God mode restorations]

Today's glorious task was to cut the remaining reliefs in the compound slide and cross slide dovetails.

 

[God mode restorations]

Challenging

 

[Rig Pig]

A bit of scraping to do there!

 

[Pete.]

Challenging View attachment 162306

It is doing it stood up like that. Get a couple of chunks of 4x2 wood and cut a big vee in one side of each. Screw a flat length of timber down on to one side of the vees so it overhangs each side and g-clamp your part to that.

 

[God mode restorations]

It is doing it stood up like that. Get a couple of chunks of 4x2 wood and cut a big vee in one side of each. Screw a flat length of timber down on to one side of the vees so it overhangs each side and g-clamp your part to that.

That's all I had Pete. I had a big clear out of old timbers and stuff. Had to come up with something. It's awkward but done now. Ran a test with it all together and it's very nice.

 

[God mode restorations]

Last big part to scrape .