Lathe Training/Instruction

The Nscc Community college used to have a night class. in my area.
May be a shop teacher or machinist, is looking to make a few extra dollars.
You could offer to work a bit for free, job shadowing at a machine shop.
 
They did indeed! I attended that very class in NG over the course of a few years. I also taught night school woodworking at a different NSCC College. What a shame those in charge saw fit to do away with the program.
 
trevj said:
Strangely, if you think that how the lathe is powered has anything to do with it's use, I would say that you are pretty much dead wrong.

Electric motors suitable for use in shops like the ones they meant these machine tools to be used in, were not all that common, and neither was electricity, for that matter.

ANY suitable power source, water power, steam, a gasoline motor, etc., would be used to turn a line shaft, and one line shaft system would run the whole building's machinery.

Not too many line shaft machine shops left operating, but the basics of operating a lathe have not changed.
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Actually, from a historical point, the book is very interesting, but the practical applications are general and dated. We've come a long ways since then. Jawed chucks are just passed over. Saw one of these belt operated lathes at a sale last year. kind of a bastard machine, but obviously factory. An electric motor had been adapted by a humongous casting over the head stock, made it about 8 ft. tall. Practical but space prohibitive, machine sold for 80. Book was 6 bucks on Amazon, so no loss. :)

Grizz
 
I haven’t touched a lathe since high school, which was.............. a while ago.

Are these old South Bend 9” decent enough for barrel work? There is a 4ft model not far from me for $1100. No idea if that price is low, high or what. Gear change model with gears, 3 and 4 jaw chuck, steady rest.
 
#1bcshooter said:
School lathe looks just like my lathe :rolleyes:
Mine is an old school lathe :d

JdOBlFH.jpg
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Looks like mine...South Bend 1947 Model A 36 inch bed ...still apart for cleaning ,painting and replacing wicks etc
 
Leg said:
I haven’t touched a lathe since high school, which was.............. a while ago.

Are these old South Bend 9” decent enough for barrel work? There is a 4ft model not far from me for $1100. No idea if that price is low, high or what. Gear change model with gears, 3 and 4 jaw chuck, steady rest.
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General condition counts for a lot.

For a bunch of info, check out the South Bend pages on the www.lathes.co.uk site, if you have not already.

Figure that a really crudely built Chi-Com Mini-Lathe will run you pretty small change back from a $1000 if you buy it new.

If it interests you, by all means, check it out, and see what it looks like. While change gears can be a little slower and less convenient than a Quick Change Gearbox, they also have the ability to cut threads that you would not be able to do on a gearbox equipped lathe without dicking about with extra gears anyways. It only takes a few minutes to change them out too. Not near the misery that some wold have you think it was.

Oh yeah, barrel work. With suitable skills, and a decent imagination for setting up, pretty much any lathe can be used for barrel work. With the longer bed, you will likely be doing your chambering on the steady rest at the tail end of the lathe. Lots of folks had one of these lathes as the only lathe in their gunsmiths shop.
 
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OP there's a lot of good info here.

I bought my first lathe about 4 years ago. It's a 13x36 colchester master. It weighs somewhere in the 2000lb mark aND really it's more lathe then I need BUT I paid my buddy $700 for it with a ton of tooling it was a no brainer.

When I first bought it I knew nothing about lathes, I read a couple books and watched a lot of YouTube videos by Lyle Peterson.

You could also order a copy of AGI's lathe course, it's about 6 dvds long


The best way to learn how to operate a lathe is to use one, can only get so far by watching others do it.

As for a 9" southbend lathe being big enough I'd say yes as long as a person is doing shorter barrels as the spindle on those is pretty small so you need enough length to set up your barrel in a steady rest and chamber and thread fom the right end.

I'm looking for a second lathe now as I'd like a smaller lathe for my basement so something like a 9" southbound is right up my alley.
 
What's the min lathe size for firearms related work?

Sorry, if this has been addressed already.

M
 
gnmontey said:
What's the min lathe size for firearms related work?

Sorry, if this has been addressed already.

M
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That depends on what types if barrel work you want to do

For pistols a small lathe could do the job.

For rifle barrels you either need a spindle bore large enough to pass the barrel through the headstock or a long enough bed to chamber with a steady rest at the right end of your lathe.

Bigger isn't always better but larger lathes are usually capable of doing be more precise work as they are more rigid.

But you can get away with a smaller lathe you just need to get creative sometimes and know your machine. I be leave machining quality is all in who is doing the work.

I'd say minimum 9" swing and at least 30" between centers is smallest I'd go for rifle barrels.
 
A fella gotta watch for getting in too deep to back out, too. Older large lathes typically have a much smaller through spindle bore size than a more modern one. The old big lathes come cheap, but were designed in an age when very much of the work was done between centres not through the spindle bore.

About the minimum bore I would suggest looking at would be around a 1 3/8 inch bore, if you plan to run a barrel through the spindle. This will also allow you to use 5C collets, arguably the most common, and least expensive collet system around, as well as allowing most raw blanks to be held through the headstock. The up side of this is that many of the size machines most of us can consider, either new or used, are using spindle bores of this size or larger. My 7 inch swing Myford lathe has iirc 11/16ths inch bore, but my 11 inch swing Emco has 1 3/8 inch bore and a D1-4 cam lock spindle nose same as my Colchester Master 2500, a far larger and heavier machine (though still a lightweight in the grand scheme).

If you want to deal with the big boomers , BMG and Chey-Tac barrels, well, the price of admission goes up accordingly.

Large precision bearings are much more expensive than smaller ones. Larger diameter plain bearings run up against surface speed limitations, so large old lathes need to run slow by comparison to smaller ones.

Another potential gotcha, is on some of the older, really top quality lathes, like the Monarch 10EE, the spindle can be quite too long to be able to mount up a barrel on a cat head at each end, while the distance between centres is quite short. Look up some pics and you will see. Not that you cannot get good use, just that you will have to adapt the use to the lathe as you must.
 
Blastattack said:
Minimum size for me would be 40" between centers. Chuck size is largely unimportant. The heavier the better.
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I have two lathes in my shop. One is a back gear unit with a 1 3/8" spindle bore/ 14" swing and 40" between centers. The other is a quick change gear box Grizzly with 1 3/8" spindle bore/14" swing and 30" between centers.

Both are very good lathes as long as I do my part. The Grizzly is set up with a 4 jaw chuck and a spider that is threaded into the rear of the spindle. I use it when I'm being anal. The other lathe is a bit handier and wears a 3 jaw chuck. It's handy for the quick and dirty jobs.

I have never been a fan of chambering through a steady rest. Not that they aren't as accurate but because unless you sleeve the barrel the steady rest holders leave marks. Especially those with brass tips.

One other thing I like about the Grizzly is that I can cut the threads/chamber on the same set up and that both are true to each other. Still, with enough attention to detail cutting threads with the bore centered on the live center in the tailstock is pretty good and there is also more room. Also, you don't have to dial in to eliminate runout.
 
bearhunter said:
I have two lathes in my shop. One is a back gear unit with a 1 3/8" spindle bore/ 14" swing and 40" between centers. The other is a quick change gear box Grizzly with 1 3/8" spindle bore/14" swing and 30" between centers.

Both are very good lathes as long as I do my part. The Grizzly is set up with a 4 jaw chuck and a spider that is threaded into the rear of the spindle. I use it when I'm being anal. The other lathe is a bit handier and wears a 3 jaw chuck. It's handy for the quick and dirty jobs.

I have never been a fan of chambering through a steady rest. Not that they aren't as accurate but because unless you sleeve the barrel the steady rest holders leave marks. Especially those with brass tips.

One other thing I like about the Grizzly is that I can cut the threads/chamber on the same set up and that both are true to each other. Still, with enough attention to detail cutting threads with the bore centered on the live center in the tailstock is pretty good and there is also more room. Also, you don't have to dial in to eliminate runout.
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All of these are reasons why you don't bother with running it through the spindle. I don't see any practical advantages of the setup. Run the barrel between centers and call it a day.
 
OK, so it's an old thread, but gonna give a shout out for another book Amazon suggested after the South Bend one. Basic Lathework For Home Machinists by Stan Bray. About as elementary as it gets. Originally British, so a lot more do it yourself than the go out and buy it us North Americans are used to, a slighly different approach. Definitely worth the few bucks it cost.

Grizz
 
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