Today I spent some time doing the final polish on the bed and risers and hauled them downstairs. The rubber gasket on the headstock end of the bed took quite a while to clean. It was coated with that hard grease the machine was covered with when I bought it. It took lacquer thinner to cut it, but it looks pretty good when cleaned up and is a pretty tight seal for being so old. The other rubber gasket on the tailstock end is not in very good shape, so I'll try to find some 1/16" rubber to make a new one to replace it with. It's hard to see the shine in the picture, but you can really see the lights reflecting off the tailstock pedestal and riser in the picture. I'm just glad it's starting to look like a lathe again. The bed is all painted, but needs to sit a couple days for that final coat of clear to get hard. Then I'll work on getting it all shined up and see if Neil and I can lug it down to the basement.
Part of the reason for working so hard on the finish is the hope it will be easier to clean. I spent quite a while with a Scotchbright pad to clean up the surfaces on the tops of the risers and got quite a bit of dust into the chip tray. It was amazing how easily it wiped up with a bit of Fantastic, so this looks like it may work pretty well. Don't know about durability, but I'll find that out over time. I'm sure a year from now it will be scratched up quite a bit, but that's to be expected with use.
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