Project Myford - Supplemental...

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Having bolted the old lathe to my [now metalworking] bench and checked the ways for true (as far as I can with the tools available to me), I've turned my attention to getting the thing powered up and rotating, so I can see how accurately it can turn actual metal stock! The motor and belt drive mounting arrangements Dad used are now forgotten to me, as the photographs I took of it's last resting place in his workshop disappeared with whatever phone I was using when I picked the lathe up - well pre-iPhone days.

I've been playing around with some of the bits I have left and have decided to cobble together a combined motor-mount/belt feed affair from them. I found a couple of seriously butch springs (shown) in the back of the workshop, so I think I'll pivot the motor at the intermediate shaft side and suspend the other side on the springs, allowing the weight of the motor (not inconsiderable as it's a half-horsepower job) to tension the vee-belt feeding the intermediate. As with my woodworking, there's more inspiration and improvisation than anything, but I think it will work out OK.

And yes, for those old enough to remember, those are 2oz. cigarette tobacco tins you can see in the picture: three of which were actually smoked by the old man - the Players 'No Name' tin in the foreground I've had since Winson Street, but I don't know who chuffed its contents. But just like Dad, I use the things for tool bits, drills, taps, dies, screws and God knows what else...What goes around, etc... BTW, Dad used to get me to go to the shop for two 2oz. tins and a 1oz. packet of Golden Virginia every week: 5oz. of baccy: I used to get twenty cigarettes out of 1/2oz. Do the arithmetic. I've no idea how he did it: but the fact that he coughed himself into submission and gave up in his early fifties says everything.


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