grayson lathe rebuild

ive put some more pictures in my album

this is what lathe looked like before i started

made a electrolisis bath using washing soda and water

this is after 24 hours

this is the cross slide and a damaged t-slot all after a quick scrape

this is after a week

a jet wash and a scrape here and there

all the bright work before polishig

this is after polishing using a dremel rotary tool

the lathe has a coat of zinc phosphate primer im gonna give it another coat then paint it

all comments welcomed

hi ive just purchased a grayson lathe. i was wondering if you had any photos of the head stock spindle broken down. i'm about to strip mine to ensure there isn't too much wear and maybe look at replacing the bearings if required.

ive uploaded more pictures of the spindle,not much to comment on it,as theres only the spindle and two

split bronze bearing,ive left mine in the headstock,it looked hard to get out without damaging them.

never noticed any play on the spindle,the bearing dont look too badly scored and no deep scratches.

when i separated the spindle from headstock i measured the diameter of it where it was in the bearings and

where flatbelt pulley is and the bullwheel

the measurement of the spindle is 1.125",and the measurement of my spindle are

nose end (front) is 1.122",the middle where bull gear and pulley is 1.123" and the back where gear train is

1.123"

the measurement that you see on the pictures was in mm (as i didnt have a imperial mic at the time)

i hope this helps

Thank you that helps a lot. At least I know there's nothing complicated in there. This is my first lathe so I'm looking forward to creating lots of swarf. Thanks once again.

Hi Dave George 1,

I see you are making good progress. It's looking good!

The chuck end of the Grayson spindle is identical to the Myford ML7 and later series, seems Myford copied that when they bought Grayson. The thread and register collar should be fine as they were made of good steel in those days. On mine the front bearing portion had been badly chewed up and I had to resort to metal spraying and then regrinding to salvage the spindle.

So any chucks or other bits which fit the Myford range should also fit. The headstock bronze bushes on mine were easily removable and I did make new ones as the originals were pretty shot when I got it. IIRC there are minute dowel pins that hold the bush in place, but it is a long time ago when I last played with the old girl.

I'm in the Midlands. I had a sudden urge to get creative so decided to get a lathe. I've wanted one for a while and when I saw the Grayson on line I couldn't resist. I'll let you know how I get on with stripping the headstock. I know she's an old girl, probably older than my dad but she seems a good place to start.

Does any body know if I could use Myford gears to get the screw cutting set up as I only have what seems to be the minimum set up at the gear end.

Edited By dave george 1 on 09/06/2016 16:53:27

Hi Dave George 1,

The Grayson change gears and the Myford ones are interchangeable, again seems Myford copied the Grayson design.

The only difference is the Myford ML7 ones have a keyway in the bore whereas the Grayson ones do not. They instead have one or sometimes two dowel holes in the boss. This takes a dowel pin to couple two gears together for compounding.  One both types the bore is 5/8-inch. They are are both 20DP and similar thickness, the Grayson ones being a tad thicker. Nominally 1mm thick against the 9.5mm for a ML7 but not an issue.

In the picture the Grayson gear is on the left and the Myford on the right.

Edited By John Fielding on 11/06/2016 16:26:32

That's great I should be able to purchase a selection of gears from the well known auction site. All I need to do is figure out a gear stud that's suitable for both myford and Grayson gears. Thanks for the info John

The Grayson gears are nominally 11mm thick, probably 7/16-inch, I see I typed 1mm in my earlier post. Finger trouble on a cold day!

MIight be easiest to convert those Grayson pin holes into keyways by slotting them in the lathe once you get it together. Easily done in the lathe using a boring bar with the toolbit ground to size and turned sideways, they use the carriage feed to to gradually open out the slot. Then you can use standard Myfrod gear studs.

Thanks Hopper I hadn't thought of that. I was considering putting pin hoes in the myford gears to lock them together but was wondering the feasibility of that.

Even easier - if you have the correct drive for the Grayson gears - is to drill a hole in the Myford gears to accept the Grayson pins. From the lathes.co.uk website early Myford gears (ML1 &2 era) used pin drive rather than a key anyway.