My (now blue) surface plate

I was thrilled to get that gorgeous Starrett Crystal Pink surface plate. I don't think it had ever been used. It seems such a shame to stain the top with blue, and it doesn't come out. But, I didn't get it to look at, I got it to use.

The thing on the surface plate is my dovetail reference. I did have to scrape it to get it perfectly flat before I could use it.

Returning to scraping

It's been a long time since I've had much time to work on the lathe. I had a heavy semester both Spring and Fall and traveled quite a bit last summer. We also replaced the porch last summer, which took up a lot more time than expected, but looks very nice. In the mean time, I was not that happy with my home-made scraper and kept watching eBay for a better one. I did buy a nice hand-made carbide scraper for about $10, but before it even got here I snagged a brand new Anderson scraper, two carbide blades, and one high speed steel blade all together for less than $100. I was thrilled to finally have the right tool.

But, then I tried to sharpen it and had no luck at all. You don't want to hit it with a regular green wheel and sharpening by hand with a diamond stone would take forever and was not seeming make a dent. Finally, I invested in one of those Enco carbide grinders and a diamond wheel. It makes quick work of that carbide. I figure I'll use it for other carbide grinding later on, anyway, so it's a good investment. It has a lot of runout, but that's another story. Anyway, I've gotten the bottom of the cross slide very good and flat, then the flats on the saddle. Next, I launched into the dovetails on the saddle and I have them pretty good, now as well. They are within about 1/10000 of parallel as well. I'll post a picture of how I measured that pretty soon. Next step is the dovetails in the cross slide.

Surface plate now ready to use...

As you can tell by the dates, it's been a heavy semester and I've had very little time to work on the lathe project. About the only thing I managed to do was create a place for my new surface plate and finally get it out of the kitchen. I had this roll around cart which is pretty heavy duty and the same size as the plate. However, it was a bit low to use. So, I built a wood drawer unit where I can put tools related to the plate. It turned out very nice, I think. I also had some drawer slides from a previous project and made a shelf underneath that pulls out. I put the Enco 12x18 plate on it. I figure I might sometimes want to use it for measuring, especially if the top plate is significantly blued. My old plate is on the bottom, so this unit weights close to 400 pounds, now. But, it's pretty stable when working on it.

I found the 12x18 very restrictive when spotting, so I'm hoping to get back to scraping pretty soon and see how much better I like this larger plate. I'm very proud to get such a high quality plate for such a small amount of money and, as far as I can tell, it's in perfect condition. I love quality tools.

New surface plate

After working on scraping for a while, I figured out that I would much prefer a bit larger surface plate. I figured an 18" x 24" would be about perfect. They are not that expensive at Enco, but they cost more to ship than to buy, since they weigh close to 200 pounds. So, I created a search on Ebay for surface plated within a reasonable driving distance and in no time at all a Starrett Crystal Pink 18x24 showed up in a small town just south of here and I picked it up for $88. As far as I can tell, it's in perfect shape and even includes the hard plastic cover. I used the hoist to get it out of the truck, then managed to get it up the few steps and into the kitchen, and that's where it remains, next to the pantry on a furniture platform. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get it downstairs to the basement.

I've had next to no time to work on anything lately. Work has just consumed every minute. I spent a little while last weekend and managed to do some more scraping on the cross slide top, which is close to right. Then I'll move on to the dovetails again. I still can't seem to get the scraper to cut as cleanly as I would like, even though I am used all diamond sharpeners. But, it does get it incredibly flat, just maybe not as pretty as I would like. Actually, the only scraped area that may show is the top of the cross slide and I'll likely paint that, anyway, leaving only the area under the compound unpainted.

On its own four feet

Alas, I've been working so much I've had little time to spend on the lathe project. I did spend some time putting up new shelves and cleaning a bit in the shop and I have been moving more and more of the parts downstairs into the basement, but I've not done much actual work on the machine. So, I took some time today and put the remaining two feet on and leveled the bed.

I really love high quality tools. One of my prize possessions is a Moore and Wright engineer's level I managed to pick up at a local auction a few years ago for $35. The graduations work out to about 0.003 per foot and you can read much less than the graduations, so I figure I can reliably level to less than 0.001 per foot. I did have to spend some time aligning it. There are adjustments and you get it so it is level whichever way to point it. I was then able to get the aligned to a good deal of accuracy. Small changes in the leveling adjustments were clearly visible on the level.

I'm a long way from a real assessment of the status of the bed, but moving the level around I could not see any deviation from level when end to end and cross ways there was only about 0.001" that I found in the heavily used area near the headstock. Otherwise, it's all on the mark. I'm pretty confident that it's in good shape. Now, I was basing this on the flats. I'll try it with the apron sometime soon, though I think I need to do an undercut on the apron first.

No time lately...

I've been positively swamped with work lately, so there's been no time for the lathe project. I did finally break down and order the Conelly book "Machine Tool Reconditioning". I keep hearing people talk about how hard this book is to get, but I just ordered it from Amazon.com marketplace and it came right in.

To the left is a real "made in England" hand scraper. It's a small one that I picked up very cheaply on eBay. There have been more of them since as well. I wanted to compare high-speed steel scraping to the carbide I have been doing. Just playing with it, it needs to be reshaped, since the curve it came with and the angle of the tip and very aggressive. I did some sharpening and it's looking like it does a nice job. It does get dull pretty quickly, though, as expected.

Below is my 18x24 surface place. Actually, it the new plate on the right and the one that arrived broken on the left. I put them both on a perfectly sized stand I picked up at a school auction for $1. I use the broken one for spotting and the good one for measuring. That way I'll never get any blue on the good one. That stuff does not come off very easily. I don't think it really matters to the function of the plate, though. I really want a single 18x24 surface plate. They are pretty cheap to buy, but the shipping costs more than the plate. I figure I'll keep an eye out for someone selling one here in Michigan, where machine tools are somewhat of a glut and I can just pick it up. Then I have to get it to the basement (it's close to 200 pounds).

Scraping moves to the saddle

I spent the entire evening scraping. I'm satisfied that the bottom of the cross slide is done. It has a large number of evenly distributed bearing points and looks very nice. So, I spent some time on the top of the cross slide. It was somewhat rough and I figured it should be as flat as possible. I read one person online who had his ground, but several people said that can cause them to warp, ruining my scraping job on the bottom and I didn't really want to have to take it somewhere and pay to get something so small done. So, I figured I might as well scrape it. I started with a file to get the really high spots down, then worked it until I kinda got tired of working on it. It's flat over most of the surface and that entire area measures within 0.0005" relative to the bottom of the slide. I didn't really have to do much to make it level other than scrape down one corner a bit harder. It's not all of the way to the corners, though, so I'll have to spend some more time later. It appears to have bowed up just a little bit with time.

I was ready to try something else, so I launched into the saddle, using the cross slide as a reference. The picture above is after about four passes. The gib side had a ridge on the inside as would be expected and I've about got that down. It's clearly more worn toward the far end than near the apron end, again as would be expected. I really don't think this scraping is going to take too long to get done, given the progress I make already. In general, this machine was not that badly worn when I got it.

I spent quite a bit of time grinding the scraper bit. The large flat surfaces on the bottom and top of the cross slide were easy, but now I'm having to get into dovetails, so I ground the sides and front back so it's more like a chisel. That seems to work pretty well. I don't think I'm scratching the dovetail side very much and I'll be back to scratch it a bunch later on, anyway.

The plan is to get the saddle bottom flat, then use the scraping plate I bought to get the saddle dovetails flat and parallel. Then I'll use that as a template for the cross slide dovetail and the tapered gib.