Hi,

My new project is a 1/4 scale model of my own lathe – a Drummond Pre-B Type made in about 1910.

One of the conical headstock bearings has reached the limit of its adjustment, so I had the headstock dismantled to take dimensions to make a replacement. While the headstock was demounted and in bits I took the opportunity to make fully dimensioned drawings of the parts for future reference – and one thing led to another….

The obvious place to start is the bed. On the original, this is cast and to make a cast. Casting is not a process that I have access to, so I am going to mill/file the part from solid and fabricate some of the minor detail. Progress so far:

As you can see, I've a long way to go with this component…

Ian.

Having frightened myself with the thought of trying to machine the bed, I decided to start with something a little easier.

I spent yesterday evening flycutting some small slabs of stock to the desired thickness and then cut the 'blanks' that will become the compound slide, the cross slide and the saddle and filing them to shape.

Compound parts:

I machined the dovetails in the saddle, drilled and tapped the gib adjustment holes and filed the saddle to shape:

Hi,

Today's progress – a bit of machining and drill/tapping to make the cross slide fit the saddle, and a little work with a needle file to shape the gib strip.

The parts (only one of the locating dimples has been drilled on the gib strip so far):

The cross slide fitted to the saddle:

Viewed from underneath:

The next challenge is to make a small Tee-slot cutter to produce the cross-slide Tee slots.

Ian

A bit more progress:

The feedscrew for the cross slide machined out:

I also cut out the cross slide front plate. After threading the feedscrew, the cross slide and saddle could be fully fitted with the front plate and feedscrew. A small handle was quickly filed up to allow the operation to be tested:

View underneath:

I also roughed out the headstock – milled/hacksawed from a block: