Stringer EW lathe

The danger with using T nuts and studs is that of the stud passing bthriugh the T nut and trying to jack up the top ,of the T slot.

Casst iron being relatively weak in tension, it will break.

So T bolts are bthe safest way to go.

If studs and nuts are unavoidable, centre punch the underside ot the T nut so that the stud cannot pass through to contact the bottom of the T slot.

Don't know the EW, but being fairly old, trhe bearings may not be ideally suited for the speeds that optimise carbide tips.

So probably safest to stick with HSS tooling..

Also a short HSS toolbit will ,probably cost abouit the same as just one carbide tip, and can be reground several times after the shops are shut, and that was the last carbide tip you had in stock!

Howard

My first lathe was an EW bought s/h some 60 years ago, in those days carbide tooling was not used very much if at all on small lathes,especially on lathes with plain cast iron mandrel bearings which had a single split with adjusting/clamping screw,and the lubrication was via simple countersunk drilled holes,no wicks or drip feed lubricators ,this type of bearing with crude lubrication is not suitable for high speeds,and in fact my lathe came with a lot of carbon steel tools,in fact my lathe had some scoring on the spindle yet no marks in the bearings,some advice from my employer at the time was dont buy any more carbon tools only use HSS and he also told me that poorly lubricated bearings usually result in damage to the steel spindle, At the time I was using a Boxford at work and soon found the EW a pain in the b/side as there were no half nuts,I was 19 at the time and never thought about doing the half nut conversions that have been done in recent years, finishing my apprenticeship and two job changes I bought an ML7 and cheerfully waved the EW goodbye,

The advice on T-nuts and bolts of course applies to any machine-tool but the T-slots on the EW's broing-table and vertcial-slide are quite fine. I have made T-bolts as a square of steel with a stud screwed into it right to the limit of the thread, then faced flush.

The bearings such as they are, are not separate components. The un-hardened steel spindle runs directly in the line-bored headstock castings. Similarly with the countershaft and its journals. Keep them well oiled.

There is nothing wrong with using carbide tips at fairly low speeds but HSS tooling is a lot more economical on light lathes running at modest speeds. In fact when the EW lathe was introduced a lot of model-engineers would have been using carbon-steel tools, sometimes made from worn-out files.

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I've a few tool-holders made from oddments of rectangular m.s. bar drilled to take little cutters ground from broken HSS tools and the like, gripped in place by grub-screws. Not a quick-change system but I can see a very simple and obvious way to make them such, using the top-slide edges to locate small fences milled in or screwed onto the blocks.

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If you have a vertical slide for your EW lathe, don't rely just on its single T-bolt.

I made a pair of substantial L-shaped blocks, in mild steel; one each side is then held to the boring-table by its own pair of T-bolts so the "L" legs act as back-stops to take the rotary load imposed on the assembly in use.

I square the VS to the table by lowering it below the table surface then gently pushing it back to the table while tightening its stud.