Project Myford

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OK - I was going to have a wild rant about the putative elevation of Dido-bloody-Harding to the role of CEO of the NHS: a prospect which renders me apoplectically speechless and foaming at the mouth: both at the incipient stupidity of the idea itself and at the culture of of Tory entitlement and duplicity that would enable such a gross folly. But I won't. Today. I'll leave that one for tomorrow. Instead I'll lead on my latest project: my Dad's old lathe.

I took possession of this venerable old Myford 7" when Dad died in 2012, and it has languished unused in the small shed which was meant to be my workshop and which has served the past few years as a dumping ground for just about anything deemed useful but non-urgent, hence rendering its function as a usable workshop untenable. To reduce the lathe's not inconsiderable weight a little, I stripped it of it's tailstock, most of the tool-slide and it's chuck, saving I guess around 10-15 kilos. The move from shed to studio workshop was made using staging (two stools & a couple of flight cases,) and a sack truck. The final lift was only about 12", which was achieved without spinal injury. Result.

I was expecting to find serious evidence of the ravages of time and damp on the old thing in the form of rust, but no: the inherent, superior quality of the iron castings and their long-acquired patination of oil and grease show the thing to be  pretty much up and ready to go with only minor fettling. The only major question I need to sort is whether to re-instate the layshaft drive train that Dad had used in later years, or go back to the original, direct double stepped pulley drive that we used to use back in the Winson Street days. I'll have to see which is the most practical given the space constraints on my bench. Keep you posted!



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