Member postings for Bob Stevenson

in our workshop at Epping Forest Horology Club we have two Schaublin 70 lathes that use a belted drive from a pulley cone above the lathe headstock and slightly behind ...the motor is in line with the bench and behind the lathe. Flat belts supply the power.....In essence, similar to a myford drive.

There have been suggestions among member recently that the layout may not be the best one and a more modern layout might be adopted.

Chris,...Wether or not you were 'lucky' depends entirely on how you define 'luck'......

It seems to be mostly forgotten or ignored that the 'Chinese rubbish' is being sold by UK middlemen, importers and others who have greatly enjoyed a wonderful bonanza buying Chinese for the very lowest price that they can get, and thus, have plenty of rubbish to entice UK buyers with.... China only sells rubbish to people who order it from them.

....but that bonanza is almost over now that China has Europe where it wants it......

It comes as a repeated shock to Europeans that the Chinese are a deeply pragmatic and energetic people backed by a 4000 year history and civilaisation who can make whatever they want to at whatever level of complexity and quality......but the bill is coming soon for us, I fear.

If you do a google search it show several section with the following name/number;

Steve Cox on 07836 736496

.......Anyone know who Steve Cox is?....or was!

https://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/Hill.htm

.....I bet Cherry's mill is cleaner than that too!

It goes like this;

.....The malignant busy-body across the road hears that you are making a flintlock in your shed so she takes pleasure in dropping in to the local police station to ask if it really is legal for you to do this. The plod think it all sounds ok, except,..they have not heard of anyone else making a flintlock in their shed and they need to cover their backs, so they tell their firearms officer to take a look......

The firearms man visits you and your shed and thinks it all looks and sounds ok,..except, he has not heard of anyone else making a flintlock and there is a chance that you are making it to shoot the malignant busy-body. So, he makes notes and snaps pix on his phone of any parts you have made and, needing to cover his back, hands it all to someone higher up.

The higher up plod think it all looks harmless, except, they have not heard of anyone else making a flintlock in the shed and, needing to cover their backs, they ring up the Home Office to check......

The HO immediately looks in it's file for any similar event which has been 'tested in law'. if they don't find anything applicable they pass the matter on to the Assoc.of Chief Police Officers, who refer the matter to their Firearms and Explosives Sub Com.....Who will send more experienced and intelligent plod back to look more closely at your shed and everything in it!..........Now is the time to lose that old copy of Mein Kampf that you use for a door stop!

....If you think that this could not possibly be the train of events then I refer you to just one case,..that of Alan Westlake and his 'Westlake Engineering'.......take a look at his website on google and go to 'history' to see his exchange of missives with the HO.

I tend to work quite quickly when every thing is to hand with a clear workflow...this is not quite as obvious as it sounds.

At the moment I am getting more than alittle frustrated by my small Chinese lathe, which while a nice enough machine has the problem that chucks are bolted to the spindle with minimal finger clearance for the nuts. This means that I put off these time consuming and frustrating chuck changes and build up three piles of half finished parts and jobs with all those waiting for the 4-jaw, 3-jaw and collet chuck..... This means that it takes forever to finish one part and it's a disjointed process which I hate. When I used a screw on spindle chuck changes were made without any thought and the task of making a particular component could stay in mind until completed. For this reason I think a lathe change might be happening quite soon now!

One factor in the various opinions is the great ill feeling and sense of injustice felt by the Vickers team, which included Barnes Wallace... If i have accuratelt grasped the fact, the Vickers team were forced by the government of the day to abort their successful activities (R100) when the Gov's design (R101) crashed and the Gov. was very keen not to be beaten by Vickers.

My mother saw the R101 pass overhead on it's way to it's destruction and told me that all the men in the family remarked on it's poor tracking as it appeared to be flying sideways.

John Smith47......In answer to your original question..."can one buy....that lock like mol"....No! you can't buy such a tool currently, and even when you could have it would not have passed your stringent design standards due to other 'defects' of operation.....

....But you already knew this, I'm sure, and that answer would preclude this topic carrying on for yet another six (or more) pages.

Just out of interest could you now show us something you have made yoursef please?...any old thing will do which is lying around your bench.....the odd model loco, clock movement or electron microscope, just so we can see what you normally do please.

@MichealG........Did you know that Vise-Grip make a specific model with jaws for gripping bolt heads and nuts without damage. It also will do general clamping and has a wire cutter,.....in fact it will do pretty much everything that the OP requires but he seems determined to ignore it. It's made in three sizes and is the 'LW' model

https://www.irwin.co.uk/tools/pliers-and-wrenches/locking-wrenches

I use the smallest one and can safely say that no clock maker should be without one!

In view of this topic I took a look at my clubs S&B model 'A' mkll....the gear change lever is very similar and has a tiny hole in the knurled thimble which houses a small grub screw to take a very small allen key..... presumable when the grub screw is loosened the thimble may be removed thus disclosing the fixing for the lever....

" advent of additive machining in metals "...wot dat?

My understanding is that the 'no date' editions are the 1940 edition printed for war use in large volume with a 'war quality' binding,...although the post war editions up to 1952 have no better bindings either.

Brass is a poor material for springs but clockmakers do work harden brass to give a degree of spring tension. The way that I usually do this is to put a ball peen hammer in the vice with the ball pein up and work the brass by light taps with a second hammer using the raised ball pein as an anvil. Overworking the brass will cause it to work harden too much and crack. The brass is, not surprisingly, thinned out some due to the hammering so you need to factor this into your calculations.

stainless steel may well be more suitable........

Lee,...Interesting post and subject but I feel that I must take you to task a little!....hope you don't mind!

In your third para. you make some statements and assumptions about lathes and mini-lathes which are, for me anyway, not properly analysed..... I used a Chinese mini-lathe for 10 years and eventually did some good work on it and without any changes apart from removing the rubber feet and dumping the dangerous chuck guard. I made my first clock largely on that lathe and I'm still waiting for someone to look critically at it and mention how they can see which bits were made on the Schaublin lathe.

Lathes are just tool for crafts and they are best chosen for the particular craft just as ancient man cast around for a better boulder or a sharper twig etc., but you have not addressed this essential matter. For every 20 or 30 or however many lathes in well loved pristine condition there is a bloke in a shed with a clapped out Myford making fantastic little gem-like items. Both 'camps' have a viable and honest hobby which keeps them happy, but NOT the SAME hobby!

In the end I changed my Chinese mini-lathe for a slightly better lathe not because I saw it as a " substantial project to turn into a reasonably accurate machine" but because I realised that it was of fatally flawed design.....you can't make a silk purse out of a pigs ear!

".. TBH, I can't quite see how the Facom is really working. I couldn't find an explainer video..."

.........Well without wishing to be unkind THAT is your problem right there!.....if you don't have the imagination and 'gumption' to work it out then you are, frankly, out of your depth on this site, not to mention with the people who inhabit!!

......Meanwhile, someone please pass me that one with the brass lined jaws....I can use that right NOW!!

Thanks fro the later crop of responses which are all valuable to me.....

Ketan,......Yes, a slip of the keyboard.....30206 it is!.....I'm impressed with your site and the disassembly photos for mini-lathe.. Excellent resource for users.

Hopper......Thanks for info, encouragement and the tip about ARC site!

S.O.D., (Dave)....Great overview and info on bearings...read it twice so far.....think quote is in second volume of bio on Wellington by Eliz. Longford..can't remember title but first vol. is 'Years of The Sword'...

Niels,......Thanks for advice....I may do this for starters and see how I get on....

Thanks to all respoinders so far!......your thoughts and experiences are very interesting.

Mike,...."how often do you lubricate wheel bearings".........When I was involved with 'vintage' Volkswagens I repacked and adjusted the front wheel tapered roller bearings every 6 months or so. although the bearing was much the same as in the WM180 it was completely different in that one could readily look and indeed examine the bearings. The point about WM bearings is that one cannot even know how well lubrication has been carried out or even what lube has been used, quite apart from complete ignorance as to the quality of the bearing used,...without pulling tghe whole lathe apart!

......Some decent design whould not have been amiss I think...(?)

I have a Warco supplied WM180 which I have owned for three and a half years. For those who don't know this lathe it's the smallest of the 'WM' lathes made apparently by the Weiss factory in China and supplied world wide to many suppliers including Warco and two or three other UK companies in different colours and model names.

This lathe is well equipped with 'oil ports' on slideways and leadscrew mounts etc and I oil these frequently as laid out in the sparse owners booklet. There is almost no mention of the main headstock bearings other than a small paragraph pointing out that they were adjusted in the factory and that increasing the end loading excessively can damage the bearings.....

Because of the readily accessible oil ports I not unnaturally assumed that the headstock had sealed or shielded bearing which require no lubrication by the user.

Over the last year or so there has been an ominous rumble developing when the lathe is at speed and when the chuck is turned by hand one can feel a distinct 'texture' rather than a freely turning bearing.

The spare parts list/drawings gives the bearing as '30602' and this is a conventional taper roller bearing such as you might find in the front wheel of and older car. A washer against both bearings are listed as a 'grease cover'. There appears to be no means of re-lubing or greasing the bearings other than a complete strip down and knocking out the bearings from the casting.....

Replacement bearing of reputable brand are between £15 and £30 a pair and I am quite prepared to carry out a bearing change,...but frequent bearing lubrication seems to not to have occurred to the 'designers'....

I wondered how other users and those with the larger 'WM' lathes have got on with headstock maintainance....??.......anyone got any observations please?

Arthur,.....I suspect that "Dull-red" needs to be 'brighter red'......as it sounds like the workpiece did not reach sufficient temp to melt the solder, which it must.

Dr Black........you have reminded me that I should have mentioned that the Silverline hex’s come with a folded steel rack which has slotted eye-holes so can be readily unclipped from bench and taken to car or washing machine etc