Gunsmithing First Lathe Project

[CaptNemo]

I recently inherited my uncles South Bend 9A 48" lathe and moved to the house from his place in Central Alabama.
Since the lathe isn't terribly heavy the moving process was pretty easy compared to what it could have been.
It was pretty manky, but a little bit of time cleaning out the chips and some oil and she want to run pretty nicely now.
I got a buttload of lathe tooling, mill cutters and machinist tools when I cleaned out that part of his shed.
My cousins and aunt were pretty happy to have that stuff gone as they weren't metal workers at all.

I bought a new Tikka CTR with a 24" barrel in December of '18 and fitted an Area 419 Hellfire Gunsmith Fit Brake to the barrel ( it was factory threaded 5/8"-24 )
The OD at the rear needed to be tapered to get it close to the barrel OD and then timed.
I did find out the the last couple of threads on the muzzle of a Tikka need a few extra thousandths of counterbore so that the rear face of the brake will seat on the barrel shoulder and not bottom on the treads.
I got it timed up, the taper looks good and got some valuable experience with my new -to- me WWII vintage lathe in how to run it and some of the speeds and feeds for a low HP manual lathe.

 

[Mordamer]

Nice. My first lathe was a Southbend 9A 1952 model. I restored it and did a lot of upgrades to it, but eventually had to sell it to buy a bigger lathe. You can do a lot with a small lathe if it is all you have. You are lucky yours has a 48 inch bed.

 

[mcfred]

Good job! I have a lot of respect for you if you used that original tool post too. I've always been spoiled with my Aloris-style CXA quick change tool post and indexable insert tools.

Between that little mill and your lathe there isn't much you can't make.

 

[MK20]

A nice project for learning on a lathe is to make a set of brass punches from brazing rod at the welding store. BTW, if you ever decide to sell the lathe I call first dibs.

 

[CaptNemo]

I used a home made cube style tool holder and not the lantern type. Cutting 17-4 PH stainless I wanted as much rigidity as possible, so the lantern tool post got set off to the side for this project.
The mill is a Precision Matthews PM-932 that is 1.5 HP, a large step up from the little Grizzly mini mills, but not quite to a Bridgeport style knee mill.

 

[flatland1]

Dad brought home an old Atlas lathe back in the late '50s, along with a few boxes of attachments, cutters, indicators, etc. He set it up in our basement, and played with it down there, allowing me to use it by the time I was in the 8th grade. It sure wasn't very rigid, but if you have sharp tools & take light cuts, it's worth having around. After I bought my 1st lathe (heavy JET 13x40, weighs just over 2000lbs), and a JET knee mill (Bridgeport copy), I bought a little AXA wedge-type QC toolpost & extra toolholders for the old Atlas, used my mill to cut the T-nut of the post to correct dimensions, & also milled the top of the compound flat to allow the toolpost to fit. It's still not a rigid enough machine to do anything approaching heavy turning, but it's great for spinning bbls while polishing with Scotchbrite pads, & other light jobs when I've got both the heavy lathes tied up with other jobs. I also use it a lot for case prep work on cartridge brass - don't know how I'd get along without the little machine.

At least yours has a gearbox for easy changes while threading & etc. Dad's old lathe came with a small box full of gears that have to be swapped-out for anything like that.

 

[sabrecross]

That looks great. Ready to fix up another barrel ;-)

 

[footsteps]

Well done

 

[BR7.62]

Very cool! My first lathe was a Logan 200 my grandpa bought new in the late 50s.
Very satisfying taking metal stock and turning it into something yourself.
Enjoy.

 

[CaptNemo]

I need a threading dial for this lathe, I didn’t find it in the stuff that I brought home.
I’ll probably get one of the 3D printed ones from EBay that costs less than 1/3 of what an original goes for.
I even used the lathe today to center drill a steel punch to have a small counter bore for a roll pin that I was installing in an AR-15 upper receiver.

 

[Wannashootit]

The 9A's are quite capable for their size, bed length is everything since the spindle is too small to chamber through the headstock,
I have one with a 54" bed (largest made) and v-belt drive that's been repowered with a 1hp VFD and outfitted with DRO's. No problems holding to a thousandth which is adequate for most operations.

If it's going to get any serious use you'll likely tire of setting tool center heights pretty quickly with that toolpost- an AXA wedge type with holders from Phase II would be a good investment.

The Practical Machinist forum has a great section for SB owners...

You say it was "manky", depending on how long it's been since the felts were replaced it may be time for a teardown- SB states every 7-10 years.
With non-use especially, the felts harden and turn to brick- and don't wick oil anymore, Manual and felt replacement kits- as well as the 4 types of lubricating oils ("A", "B", "C"- and Vactra way oil) are on Ebay. The saddle way wipers are also critical to keeping small chips from getting under the saddle so be sure to check them.

Made into the 80's, still thousands in use, parts are readily available from those being scrapped out and support is excellent- but the beauty of these old machines is their simplicity. If anything is amiss, it's usually simple to diagnose and repair.

Now the fun part...all the $$ to spend on tooling

 

[flatland1]

I agree with Wannashootit - South Bend lathes are (or used to be) really common in this country. I'd like to know how many were sold as surplus after WWII, as every Navy ship of any size had it's own machine shop aboard. There must've been thousands of them brought ashore & sold when ships were scrapped-out. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't most of those ex-navy lathes Super 10s? or bigger?

 

[CaptNemo]

Manky meant that it was covered in chips, tools and old accumulated funk. We mostly filled a 5 gallon bucket with the stuff that came out of the chip pan. I hope I do a better job of keeping it clean than my uncle did.