It does sound too much, what must not be forgotten is that the cast-iron headstock retains a bit of lube because of its make up and the mainshaft is hardened plus you are not running the lathe for long enough or hard enough to warrant lube splashing everywhere.

Lathe Lube often crops up on here ! The oil will be a light hydraulic ISO32 or SAE 10, both the same oil just different systems of spec. I would try 1 drop in 5 mins even that may be too much – you will soon know as if it is not enough then the headstock will become warm and increase in warmth ! For the bed ISO 68 or SAE 30 a old car engine oil. Good Luck Noel.

My EW has spring-cup oilers and I’d assumed that this was standard (as I’ve seen them on other EWs) but the EW Martin Cleeve modified (on checking) just had oil ‘holes’, so maybe oilers were fitted to early (or later) machines.

Anyway, as others have already stated, any light oil should do it. Whilst I don’t think you can over-oil a total loss system, three drops a minute sounds a bit excessive. I top up the cups at the start of each session but my lathe doesn’t seem to use that much. Any mess is usually caused by my missing the cup and squirting oil on the headstock.

Regards,

IanT

Paper towels used mainly because I object to an oily mess everywhere! As you say, there is not room for a thick thrust bearing without some modification. The thin PTFE washer worked for a while but became beacme torn up and failed quite quickly.

One little wheeze I could suggest is to get some cheap felt pads from the pound shop of the type used for sticking to the bottom of furniture for floor protection.

Remove sticky and cut some pieces of a size and thickness to fit reasonably tightly in the slot at front of headstock and pack your pads into slot between adjustment screw and spindle with fine screwdriver (careful, no levering  on the fragile parts or jabbing the spindle). This pad will reduce the propensity for oil to flow down the front of the headstock and also, in my fevered imagination, provide an oil saturated wick in permanent contact with the spindle.

I think originally all EWs just had an oil hole, which is sufficient as long as you don’t get carried away and forget to top up. I happened to find some minute, unbearably cute,  1 in high oilers (forget where) and just had to have them! I made a small fitting with a slightly tapered fine capillary pipe that sits in the headstock hole. The oilers can just be unplugged and emptied back into the bottle after use.

Dont really understand why you cant run carbide tools please explain as I use carbide tools down to 200 rpm for turning and 50 rpm for screw cutting

On 17 March 2024 at 18:52 merlot Said:

All the turning speed charts I have seen put Carbide approximately 4 times faster than HSS.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use it … just that you will be working outside its optimum efficiency envelope.

’though, as Jason will probably explain; it would be best to use the ‘ground’ inserts.

MichaelG.

I gave my EW simple oil-cups that are really only little cylindrical funnels, and it has served for many years like that. I just give it a drink at the start of the session.

Oil oozing down the front of the machine is only surplus and a bit messy but hardly serious when you consider the slides and lead-screw are all open, and all machine-tools are rather grubby things to use anyway.

‘

My lathe’s spindle and the headstocks are now worn though, and I am investigating how to bring them back to decent condition.

Following another contributor’s suggestion I have sent off an enquiry about having the spindle hard-chrome plated and ground back to its original 0.750″ diameter.

Failing that is the feasibility of making a spindle but I am not sure I could to proper standard with my workshop… and its staff. At least I’d still have the original one. The answer may be to use ground stock and make the flange as a separate collar pinned or grub-screwed on.

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The spindle flange had worn a sort of counterbore in the casting. I solved this by making a very thin bronze thrust-washer – I’ve just measured it as 0.048″ thick so its effect on the spindle’s axial position is insignificant. It is prevented from rotating by a peg made by screwing in a brass 6BA or 8BA stud, and filing it to a blade that locates in the casting’s adjustment slot, but is thin enough still to allow that closing on the spindle.

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Merlot –

There is a goodly section on the EW Lathe on Tony Griffith’s lathes.co web-site – and I hope your system manages to avoid the appalling external rubbish that irrelevant advertising agencies have plastered all over it!

Note that the lathe as designed does not have a fine self-acting feed. The standard change-wheels are for screw-cutting only, though investigating by spreadsheet revealed they can give a surprising range of pitches, even some of the common metric ones, to reasonable accuracy over short distances such as for studs.

If you have the vertical-slide and boring-table for your lathe, I’d advise not trying to rely on holding the VS just by the single bolt it is drilled for. I made two L-shaped steel fences about 3/4″ thick, each with 2 tee-bolts of their own, to fit to the table as buttresses against the rear and two sides of the vertical slide’s base.

I’ve also made some little tool-holders that take bits ground from 1/4″ diameter tool-steel (broken / worn out milling-cutters and the like!). They are just short lengths of m.s. rectangular bar with assorted holes for the bits, held in place by grub-screws. Drilling the holes inclined gives some height adjustment and though it’s hardly a full QCTP arrangement these holders do save a lot of faffing with shims!

I’ve also a 4-way tool-holder with my EW, but I don’t know if original or made by a previous owner. (I think I might be only its second owner!)

Apart from the Martin Cleeve articles in ME which have been mentioned here many times, you can also find some very useful ideas for the EW on Alan’s website:

http://modelengineeringnorge.weebly.com/

Regards,

IanT

PS Vertical Slide in use…

You will find that there are a few issues with a QCTH on the EW – as there will be a lot of overhang, as well as a marked restriction in (cross slide) tool movement. My solution was to use (what I call) ‘Rose’ blocks and standardising on 3/16th HSS tooling. I do have a QCTH but only use it for certain tooling that I don’t have a Rose block for or where they will not fit one.

I’ll provide a bit more info if you wish but my ‘Manager’ has other things for me to do right now, so must go!  🙂

Regards,

IanT

I set the drip oilers on my Myford to about one drip per minute or less and that is still plenty messy but I live with it. I use mostly 20/50 motorbike engine oil left over after oil changes as the ISO32 hydraulic oil runs out too quickly.

My old Drummond ran from 1937 until  early 21st century with just a drop or two of oil applied to the chamfered hole in the top of the bearing setting bolt whenever the operator thought of it. Which would be maybe once every 15 minutes if I had to guess from remembering my dad using it. No drip oilers at all until I fitted some. So the old bearings don’t seem to need much oil.