Harrison L5 lathe rebuild

[mfletch]

Time and effort well spent its looking great cant wait to see it running and cutting {don't get it dirty though}

[dallen]

I want to know where he's going to find a bell jar big enough to put over it when he's done.

DA

[Micktoon]

I have started on the other 'bits' of the lathe and decided to do the oily dirty parts first, everything has had a general clean and most of the old paint scraped off ages ago but not clean enough for paint. The main lumps are , The Norton Gearbox, The Apron/saddle/Topslide and the tailstock. As you can see they are all rough looking compared to the lathe now ! . I intend to strip and inspect all these bits and repair/replace anything that is found to be not right, then anything missed will have to be discovered once the lathe is up and running and then go from there, hopefully most things should get fixed before its up and running this way.







This is what the Norton box looked like after it was 'cleaned' , I have found the two front bronze bushes are worn where the lead screw and feed screw go into the box, I have just de burred all the cogs and generally cleaned up everything, oilways had grease in them as usual. The screw cutting charts will need a cunning plan or they are going to let the job down, there was some new ones on Ebay but the wrong charts.



I have also got the belt covers back on so its looking more like a lathe and less parts lying about too.



These photos are to show the tool box that was say three feet from the back of the lathe only had grey dust not paint overspray land on it, first shot finger ready to wipe off , second shot same bit wiped clean with finger and paint still red and shiny under the dust, this is a main bonus of this paint.





Cheers Mick

[stevec]

Gee Mick, I sure hope it wipes off your lung walls as easily.

[TomG]

Mick,

This guy makes reproduction information plates for machine tools. He primarily does South Bend lathes, but I think he will do anything if you have the original plate. It would be a shame to put the beat up originals back on after you put so much work into it.

Jim Kull

Tom

[big job]

Yes as Tom said about the repro plates. Best $35 bucks I ever
spent.

[Mayhem]

They do look nice.

[DaveH]

Very nice indeed

DaveH

[Micktoon]

Those plates look total class but I have gone with plan B as I dont think they would have Harrison plates anyway probably , John Stevenson off Madmodders forum is having a go at making some with his CNC gear, he has done some of te artwork which you can see on madmodders , under my thread ' Harrison L5 rescue', they look spot on in artwork form so fingers crossed they should come out great.

Well I have been grinding all the castings and filling in defects with filler and getting them as good as I can before primer, this batch of stuff was all fiddly ackward bits to do and also ackward to position to paint as both sides needed doing on lots of bits etc, anyway here are the photos.

All prepared


Primed with etch primer , then primer filler.


Grey at last !


This cast alloy door has been a right pain, it had loads of old primer filler and many layers of horrible old paint on it , that would have reacted to the new paint so I have sanded it back to bare alloy cast and shot blasted around the Harrison lettering then cleaned this up with riffler files etc as I plan on painting the door and having the lettering sanded back to bare alloy.



With this in mind I have sanded away the primer on the lettering so it wont have an edge when I sand the grey back to alloy.



The Harrison headstock badge and the gear speed plate badge are getting the same sort of treatment.

As they were


Blasted off


Primed


Sanded back to shiny alloy letters


Painted red


Sanded back to alloy on the writing


I should have been happy at that but thought , why not laquer them. The Laquer melted the red and spoilt the job so I will try going over with red again, if it does not work it will be back to metal and start again !
At least I can start to put some more bits back on again now .

Cheers Mick.

[Mayhem]

Those name plates and the door look great Mick. Pity about the clear lacquer, I would have done the same. I did something similar with a set of Mickey Thompson rocker covers on a 350 Chevy motor I had - Except I painted just the inside of the cooling fins and polished the rest.