Importing "Gunsmith's" lathe?

There is also a MetalSupermarket over on the east side. Can be nice to use new, known alloy stock instead of whatever turns up. There is a Busy Bee and a MetalSupermarket in Barrie as well. And in the GTA. KBC is on Kennedy Road in Mississauga, which could be a reason to force oneself to go into the GTA.
 
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Does the KBC shop carry the heavy machine tools? Whenever I have been there the heaviest stuff they had was a disc grinder. I stopped going, but that was a while ago. Anyone been recently? I would call first unless someone here can confirm.

I would also check whether the tool is metric or imperial. Imperial dials without screws are still metric machines. Of course, a lot of people want metric but for my interests most of the stuff is imperial.

I'd have gone to look at this one for 2K:

http://cgi.ebay.com/SOUTH-BEND-14-1...ryZ97230QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
 
They have all the Mills and Lathes in the catalogue on display when I was there 3 weeks ago, but you can't test drive them.

Pepperpopper, let me know when you got a Heavy 10 with long bed for sale.:)
 
CADC ( Crown Assets ) has an Atlas Model 3996 up for bid closing 07 Aug 07. Model # is 3996. Located in Burlington and weight is given as 245 kg. Too far away for me to consider.:( Kayceel
 
The lathe kayceel mentionned is item R7TO05531-7-5579. Go to w ww.crownassets.pwgsc.gc.ca/main-e.cfm. Go further to tender sales, Ontario Region, machinery category.
This looks like a really fine lathe, appears almost new in the photos. Some tooling, including a toolholder/toolpost, one chuck, faceplates, a collet set, steady rest.
An Atlas is not a heavy duty industrial lathe, but this one could handle most any barrel work you would want to do. Small enough that moving it would not be an ordeal.
You could do a LOT worse, depending on price, of course.
 
Pepperpopper; Old iron of any kind is hard to find. A lot of Canadian dealers are way overpriced. They want 2 grand for a small southbend said:
That's kind of the problem with the whole internet-as-a-reference thing. Look online, and you see lots of cheap machines. Look and see what it costs to get it home when you price stuff out. Some guys are able to take advantage of cheap or free shipping, some guys have access to forklifts and the like. Most guys don't, though. And you hardly ever hear a guy go on at great length about how much he paid in freight and crating fee's to get his "bargain" priced lathe to his house, either. A $600 South Bend, is only a good deal if you can inspect it before you lay your money down, and get it home for cheap. The distance factor is one of the prime reasons that you see so many of these machines sell so cheap, too. Folks will only risk so much, sight unseen. Considering the chances are that the 40 or 50 year old lathe is showing it's age, and that the seller is perhaps willing to gloss over a few of it's "points", but will willingly refund your money less shipping it both ways, if not satisfied...Lessee. $800 each way... Makes the $2k one that you can look at in person look a little more reasonable. Aside from that, the dealer has to eat and pay his bills, too. How else do you think the guy that works for him can afford to buy ammo? :) FWIW, there is a serious price drop in the range of machine sizes that are just plain too big to get into most guys shops. No demand. On the other side of things, I have seen what stuff like the Atlas or AA 6"lathes that Sears used to sell look like, and seen the money they bring in, and figure that someone must be collecting the things, because they are pretty much useless as machine tools. South Bend lathes get waved around like some sort of holy grail. They really are not up to the legend, even when brand new. Nice enough, just not the be-all to end all. Neither are Myfords. I have owned a South Bend, used several others, and I now own a Myford Super7 that I don't wish to be rid of, either. (I can get it in and out of my basement, if I have to!) For the price of a NEW Myford, I can go buy a couple of those gunsmiths lathes, and still have a couple years payments on my car in pocket at the end of the day. South Bend lathes were similarly overpriced new, right up to the point that they went tango uniform into the great receivership sale in the sky. If I had the money to buy a new Myford, these days, I wouldn't. On a different note, the Atlas on CADC is a Clausing lathe, wearing Atlas tags. Looks like a nice home shop machine, though not much for barrel work without running the barrel out on the steady rest. It looks to be a step up from the flat bed Atlas models. The collets that come with do not look like 5C (the ones shown appear too long and narrow) so that would rule out a 1 3/8 spindle bore, I think. I figure it will go into the $2k range, as it looks like a nicely kept machine. Been wrong before. You can never tell. Stuff that should sell cheap sells like it's solid gold, and stuff that should sell high sells like nobody wants it. Cheers Trev
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Well it's a longer drive anywhere from cold lake! Otherwise though I agree with you. you are giving the flip side. I know a guy who builds bikes in the NWT, and he pays ridiculous amounts on freight!

I probably wouldn't have gone this route in Alberta, since I find your discounters a lot more useful than ours. House of tools has the Rongfu 45 mill and a wide variety of Bridgeport clones. I can't find anyone who sells the Rongfu in Ontario, at anything near the value. It's about 4K from King, when it could be purchased new for 800-1200 over the border. In nearby NY though we have access to unlimited South Bend it seems, so one has to take into account the realities of the location.

I didn't buy sight unseen, but picked up, which is the only reasonable option for me. I got to look the machines over, they all appear to be in good condition, but time will tell. On an ebay transaction I was just hoping someone wouldn't really want the pain of dealing face to face with a guy with a lot of miles under the tailpipe, why not just blow me off and go for a local sale.

I didn't have moving troubles and handled it at both ends, no added cost. Two people can move one of the machines because they are light duty. For a lot of people that's an understated advantage. Think of it in gun terms. If you didn't have to move, wouldn't something like a 50 cal emplacement be a nice deal, but if you have to move they hand you an M16. Every argument on lathe firepower is going to be won by the "bigger gun", and I was willling to go that route, I just couldn't make it work. Amateurs don't live with the lathe, life goes on around it. And when I couldn't find a lathe I would settle for in the larger sizes, I finally sold myself on the SB. Now having done that I probably wouldn't be any the worse off had I gone for the local 9 inch clone, I just could never sell myself on that. Over the years I have seen so many projects I admired done on the bench top SBs I was willing to settle for it. Just today I was in the local gunsmith shop, asked them what the lathe they had was, off in the mists of the back room. SB 9" is what it was. Just the quick change gear box made it hard for me to match it up with mine.

So I agree there isn't anything magic about an SB, it is just a lathe. I guess my feeling is that if you buy a good one at a fair price, the price should go up over time. You have a very solid type, with some features many clones don't have, like back gears. And since I felt I was settling for something smaller than I wanted, it helps that it's like an old classic gun, something that some people love to find just for what it is itself.


You mention the distance factor keeps the price down, I don't really see that. I mean I got mine out of a guy in New England. There are more big cities within a few hundred miles of where I picked it up than there are in all of Canada. I don't know how to explain it. I guess a lot of people look at the problems, not the solutions. I took a small risk rather than buying new. By the time this is over I hope to be a paid up old iron guy. The only way to learn the hazards of the trade is to jump in. I have had first rate service from Busy Bee, but the product hasn't been foolproff. I have moved large chunks around a lot from them, and my first lathe by them had gearbox problems. So while there are problems, with second hand so too with new comunist stuff. BB was great about returns, but I burned up some goodwill on the moving parties.
 
Hi Guys, just a quick note to say the couple of days ago I bought an OLD
S.B at farm sale, din't even know it was there, went for a sprayer that I passed on. it has v belt drive , no quick change box, you have to change
the gears, only a four jaw chuck ( damn) everything seems nice and tight.
I havn't had time to do anything with it yet, will clean it up later, I haven't measured it - looks to be about 40 inch+/- and the price was right,
and is small enought I may even be able to get it on the bench if only I could
find it! I am mainly into wood- so no room.
Marshall, in Sk.
 
Just noticed an ad from w ww.precisionmatthews.com, in Pittsburg. Oriental iron. "Free shipping on all machines. Offer excludes Alaska & Hawaii and some areas of Canada".
 
South Bend 13x40

Just put the lathe in the basement last night. My company tried to arrange
to have me run to Hartford, CT and deliver/pickup a load for them while I
could swing over and pickup the lathe, but it got cancelled. So, I headed
out with my 1/2 ton beefed up pickup truck on Monday.

Tested out the machine on Tuesday, loaded it and headed back. The machine
itself weighed around 1,300 lbs., but ye ol' pickup was not showing any
signs of being overloaded with some arch still left in the rear springs. I
had absolutely no problems whatsoever. In fact, it all went as good as it
gets with beautiful weather. No hassles with authorities or the border. I
guess you could call it, an uneventful 900 miles round trip and a cost of $280 Cdn including Hotel.

Last night I had four friends with a forklift and careful maneuvering, had
it in the basement. Things went real fast and easy, so fast I had no time to
take any photos of it being lifted off the truck.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the condition of this classic and how
smooth everything went to get it home. Total cost of machine and border taxes $3,150 US. I did have the advantage of a forklift at both ends and a solid pickup truck since I drive tractor-trailer I also could have picked it up that way at no cost to me, but I decided to get it myself. With the Cdn/US exchange rate as it is, it really is a good time to do this. Since I was looking for an excellent condition machine and not a restoration project, I paid a little more and got what I wanted. Try before you buy is still good wisdom.
Here's a photo of it in my basement.

http://xs218.xs.to/xs218/07314/IMG_5094.JPG
 
Rotten Canucks........

Taking all our wonderful SB lathes to the north woods.

Corben1
960 miles (exactly) from Connaught
 
Corben1 said:
Taking all our wonderful SB lathes to the north woods.

Corben1
960 miles (exactly) from Connaught
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This one was sitting in a hospital maintenance shop collecting dust near Hartford, CT. Vintage 1978 and hardly used. I felt it needed a good home and to be put back to work.;)

Actually, I was told the seller had some Winchester gun barrel machines for sale also. Didn't get a chance to look at them.
 
Yeah, Pepperpopper, it's a long drive to anywhere from Cold Lake. Now if only we could get rid of the damn tourists! :) Tin slums coming on fridays, leaving on sundays. Must not be getting enough traffic for their taste, during the work week.

I like the old machines. The problem with them is that they are old and often, but not always, quite well worn.

I am able, if I have to, to produce almost anything that might be broken or missing, although not always easilly or economically. I have friends that cast iron. I have some machine tools. I can use others, if I need a bigger machine.

And I like long distance driving.

I don't count myself as one of the "normal" folk, in that respect. Or some others, for that matter.

If you have the means and the access to get to the places that used to be centers of the manufacturing trade, like the US northeast, there are a lot of great machines available. More if you have a truck to haul them with.


I have seen a few guys get hung up on brand names (like South Bend) or on availability of replacement parts (very limiting when dealing with a 50 year old machine) when they could have been making good parts on a new machine that was perhaps not the machine they wanted, but was available without a two or three year search.

Sometimes you have to seed the clouds to get rained on, Eh! Once you have a lathe, you start tripping over them, and you will quickly learn that tooling can usually stay in your shop when you upgrade. Almost every guy I know that has a lathe ended up doing just this. Some of them still have the original one, while some horsetraded through several to get to the one that suited their needs.


Marshall, take a look at the www.lathes.co.uk website and see if you can ID the lathe.
It sounds like it could be a later B or C model, if the V belt drive is factory. Should have four spindle speeds (four pulley tracks) on the spindle and either a single speed or two speed countershaft (the drive unit that the motor mounts on)
Hard to say what model it may be without a picture or positive ID, but it should have a serial number on the bed, on top between the Vee and the flat, at the tailstock end. That number can ID the model and year, as well as the history of who it was originally shipped to, if you find the right folks to ask.

There are a LOT of chucks on Ebay that will fit this machine. Look for a 1&1/2 x 8TPI threaded backplate mount.

If you don't want to deal with Ebay, there are good chucks available from KBC tools. Bison brand are made in Poland, and are good stuff. About 5 inch is a good size for a 3 jaw chuck.

Buy a copy of South Bend's book , How To Run A Lathe. Lee Valley Tools sells a reprint of an older version for about $8 called How to operate a metalworking Lathe, or some such variation. Worth it!!

Have fun! It's supposed to be a fun hobby!

Cheers
Trev
 
"I have seen a few guys get hung up on brand names (like South Bend) or on availability of replacement parts (very limiting when dealing with a 50 year old machine) when they could have been making good parts on a new machine that was perhaps not the machine they wanted, but was available without a two or three year search."

I think what you are saying is perfectly true. My problem is that i tried to buy the chinese lathe locally BB is literally 5 minutes from me, it just didn't work. I have been on this project for several years. One lathe would be crap, not up to taking a cut; another would have a big through head, but not enough bed length; None of them were slow enough for thread curring; they wouldn't have extra tube outboard to mount a spider or hand crank; They are too heavy... I would wander over there every few weeks and just kinda mill around lost looking. Once I started looking for an SB I located several real option within a few weeks. Most of the limitations aren't related to quality issues, but travel limitations. In detroit, before I had really comited, there were a couple of estate sales going for around 500 that must have had 5 grand in tooling alone, no way to loose money.
 
Corben, just making up for all the post industrial machinery that got sent down your way over the last 30 years. Man that high dollar really evens things up. Anyway, no problem finding an SB they don't appear to be rare yet. I can't explain the lack of demand. Maybe everyone wants to diddle with CNC, I do too, but I'm too ignorant for the moment.

Marshall, well done! You probably know this, but the 4 jaw chuck is the one you want for precision work. I find good 4 jaws seem expensive, maybe because for what a three jaw chuck is good for you can make do with a cheaper one.
 
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Thanks Trevj for the info, I stuck a tape on it tonite as I tripped over it, it is
a 36" bed, there is a plate on with info , But I will have to check them out.
I get into Lee Valley's in Saskatoon and Edmonton and will check on the book.
I Farm and do some gun smithing- mainly wood and restoration and so don't
need any thing too big ( Ye right- thats what I said about wood lathes and
table saws)
The South Bend has v belt with 3 (or4) puuleys on jack shaft.
I could take a picyure , but the tractor hydo pump went south this morning
and harvest is close and the guns are not getting done, so may not get a pict for a while.
Marshall
 
Pepprepopper, Just noticed you post on the chuck, I am no expert on metal lathes, But the 4 chuck seems to be in exc. condition.
I looked at small imported lathes a Busy bee in edmonton and thought they were to much , thou nice and compact, over the 30-40 years , most of my large wood working tools get older as I keep finding old heavy ones that are
better than the newer one I use to by at c.t , etc.
Marshall in S.W Sask.
 
For the guys in Edmonton, there is a group of hobby metalworking guys that meets at the Super 8 on the corner of 118ave and 170st on the last thursday of the month. Lots of gun related guys there, too.

Might not be for you, or you might meet some new friends.

I know there are hobby metalworking clubs or groups in Regina, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg, too. Some are more towards steam trains and the like, but all the guys are decent, and willing to help someone out if he (or she) has questions.

Cheers
Trev
 
Good morning guys , I am going brain dead- ( my wife comfirms it )
Everyone talking S.B. I got mixed you and should have said it is a
old Atlas Pat date May 16,1933 serial 2872.
it has 3 sheaf v belt drive. I don't see a model #
For the last few years I have a line on a S.B about 3 ft? Q.C. -Will end up with it I think. he has 3.
Barry
 
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