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.