New member from South Shields

[Steve MillwardParticipant @stevemillward84705]

Bought new lathe from Chester tools

Chester craftsman lots of problems at first but slowly worked through them

nice machine now sorted

what do I use to stop rust over winter months ?

thanks Steve

[Steve MillwardParticipant @stevemillward84705]

Steve

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Welcome!

My lathe is an earlier lookalike of the Chester Craftsman . A very useful machine. (Mine has a VFD though )

The 120 /127T Idler gear makes changing from Imperial to Metric threads easy, and selecting pitches is easy because of the Norton box.

To aid removal of the chucks, I drilled a hole on the OD, towards the back of each one. A lever with a pin, which is a close fit in the hole, loosens the chuck when given a smart blow with a mallet.

On my machine, the chuck guard was perspex, and fouled the Faceplate, and needed to be relieved to clear.

The guard over the toolpost was a nuisance in my view, so was soon removed.

To halve the feedrate, I made a 80T gear for the input to the Norton box. But this required the fastening for the gear cover to be relocated, entailing a finding /making a replacement for the Knob which was broken in removing it, and making a new tapping elsewhere..

At one time, I thought that I had problems with the primary belt slipping. The problem was actually that the the dimple on the inner end of the short shaft carrying the tensioning lever was too shallow.. The short lever moved, but not the shaft. Because it was difficult to access the short lever on the shaft, I had to removed the bolt on the other end of the link. Refitting the bolt was difficult but not impossible. A screwdriver to wedge the bolt in place whilst turning the hexagon head with a spanner helped getting the thread to engage.

The bolt clamping the fixed steady needs to be made captive. Otherwise you need more than two hands to hold the bolt in place, the steady, and operate the spanner to tighten the nut. I modified the clamp that goes under the bed, so that the bolt is captive, with a small cover to stop it dropping out. The method was contained in an article in MEW, some time ago.

The Tailstock, on mine, needs to be clamped tightly to prevent it slipping. I found it easier to remove the complete Tailstock (The stop pin is easy to remove ) than to try to adjust the self locking nut, underneath, in situ.

Keeping free of rust.

1 ) Keep shop temperature above dew point so that moisture doesn't settle on the machine.

My small shop is well insulated, so a 60 watt tubular heater under as bench keeps things almost completely rust free. (Almost because, in very odd places , such as boxes, spots of surface rust have been seen )

In the old shop, the Myford was covered with oil. Sometimes it would be found with with the oil having gone grey because of the condensation.

2 ) IF it needs to be said NO combustion heaters in the shop. (Unless there is a flue to the outside, and even then make sure that it is properly sealed. You don't want to die of suffocation from Carbon Dioxide, or poisoning from Carbon Monoxide ) .. They give off water vapour which will cause rusting. As do we!

When more heat is required, a thermostatically controlled 2Kw fan heater is used. In the small well insulated shop, it runs for a bout 10 -15 minutes and then cuts in infrequently.

3 ) Ventilate the shop, to get rid of the allow moist air .Moist air is heavier than dry air, so my shop has a couple of small fixed vents near to floor level. If I need forced ventilation (The shop has no windows, and when used with the door closed (External low temperatures, rain etc ) there is a 6" intake fan set high on the back wall, with an exterior cowl to keep out rain.

Hope that all this chatter is of some help.

Howard

[Brian HParticipant @brianh50089]

Hello Steve and welcome. Lots of good stuff from Howard as usual and you may consider using a dehumidifier. Electric ones are OK but so are the type with white pellets in the top chamber also work OK

Brian

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

An oily rag wiped over will work, fortunately, cast iron rusts very slowly and the slight browning is nothing to worry about.

By the way, welcome to the forum.

Edited By old mart on 01/01/2021 15:56:50

[Bo’sunParticipant @bosun58570]

As Brian H said, a dehumidifier is worth considering. Dessicant type rather than refrigerant type as they work better at lower temperatures. It's quite alarming when you see just how much water they remove. A continuous drain option is useful.

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