Richard writes:

I was very interested in Pete Barker’s article in the latest MEW (No.287). Some 55 years ago I had the same problem with my Super7B. J.A. Radford went to very complicated and difficult to achieve lengths to overcome the same problem.

The ‘narrow guide’ principle was reckoned to be the best way of guiding the saddle, but Myford tripped up with their design by making the inside saddle guide only half the length of the outside one carrying the adjustable gib strip.This made it very easy to twist the saddle when adjusting the gib, causing pronounced wear on the shorter inner face of the saddle.

I decided that the simple solution was to use the outside shears of the bed and did this by simply removing part of the original short inside guide on the saddle by milling it away. This proved to be so easy and worked really well that I modified a couple of friends’ Myford lathes.

I wrote about the modifications in an article published in Model Engineer 1st November 1974 issue, pages 1063/4. I did make one mistake when writing the article by stating that a trial facing cut over the faceplate resulted in a slightly convex surface - of course, it should have read concave.

Download Richard's 1974 article here:

 http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/sites/7/documents/Ganderton.pdf