How to Make an 8-inch Bench Lathe in the School Shop
Back
in 1920 when this nifty book was published, South Bend Lathe was only
fourteen years old. Yet their lathes were being sold in large numbers
all over the world.
Students were encouraged to build their own eight inch
wood lathe in the school shop using, of course, a South Bend metal lathe
to finish the factory-supplied castings. What you get here is page after
page of dimensioned drawings and finishing instructions for each of the
components that made up the lathe. Included are details of the jig used
to bore the headstock and tailstock, the set up for boring the Morse taper
in the spindle, a mandrel for machining both headstock bronze 
boxes
simultaneously, and more.
Page 54 provides a drawing of a tool rest that could be built to turn the lathe into a metal cutting lathe. Unfortunately, detailed blueprints were available from South Bend and not available here in the book. But you could design your own based on Gingery designs or the numerous designs that have appeared in Model Engineer for the past hundred years.
Then
you get some promotional material on South Bend products. I sure wish
I could buy the 15" x 6' engine lathe for $505!
This
wood lathe is built around robust metal lathe castings. It was deemed
a wood lathe to keep the project simple enough for students. But the lessons
you learn here are, no doubt, directly applicable to building metal lathes.
This is a fascinating book that machine builders and South Bend enthusiasts should have. Although I wished the lathe shown would have been a screw cutting lathe, I knew after just one quick thumb through that this should be reprinted. Get a copy. It's fascinating. Reasonably priced! 8-1/2 x 5-1/2 softcover 64 pages
No. 23403 ... $7.95
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