Harrison L5 lathe rebuild

[Micktoon]

Well I am glad to say things have moved on a bit over the weekend and the main parts of the lathe are now covered in three coats of grey paint. There was the usual messing about trying to sort out how to spread out all the parts to be done and still be able to get around them to paint them, I had to make a couple of brackets and mounts but managed in the end, once spraying I used a hand held lamp to move about and keep the reflection in the right place , this is to see where the paint is covering wet and where the edge of the new wet coat is so you dont get dry areas with no shine or areas getting hit twice and then runs, three of these old scrappy desk lamps packed in on me as I was trying to keep going and get around the bits, I ended up using one of the Ikea LED lamps Doubleboost gave me and it worked spot on.

After rubbing down all the primed bits there is always the odd bit that needs touched up where the primer has flatted through, I did this with rattle can primer as it dries in minutes and needs only very light flat off as its so thin. The grey areas are the rattle can, on the second photo you can see the sun ( that has not been shining for weeks) casting light and shadow right across the headstock , this is a disaster lighting situation for spraying as you have not got a clue where you are hitting , I had to wait like a vampire for the sun to go down as I could not blank off the window easy and it was getting dark soon anyway.





This was the final set up for painting , some bits have been assembled to lessen the area taken up spraying, I would rather stand things up like this than hang them , partly it seems easier and also its amazing how much things can sway about when getting sprayed. The top shelf on the electric box panel is fitted the wrong way around as it will let the paint hit all the areas that will be seen unlike if ifway fitted in its final position



First coat of grey on



This is the finished job after three coats of gloss, I have pushed it to the limit for not running but I hate dry areas and nice glossy paint is easier to wipe down too. The paint is still sort of wet here so a bit mist in the air still and I also had left the camera on the wrong setting for some of them hence the variation in colour on some photos, its the right colour of the original layer of paint anyway.

















I am glad to report that it all dried fine apart from the odd small areas that had a fault or too that would piss you off if on your new Rolls Royce but livable with on a 1959 lathe !
I can start to put some bits back on now and start on batch two of parts that need painting..........more to come soon.
Cheers Mick.