Buying an old lathe

[Jamie Harris]

Hey Bill, I saw your update today. That is funny considering that I made exactly the same decision about 2 years ago. I had a Grizzly mini lathe that was alot of fun to modify and make parts for but lets face it. It was a toy.

There are lots of resources out there to help you make a good decision when shopping for a used piece of machinery. There are several things to look for when buying an old Southbend 9" lathe. I won't get into all of them now but I can be of some assistance if anybody is considering buying one. I have bought several old lathes in the past 2 years so I can tell you some things to look out for. The beauty of owning a Southbend lathe is the availability of parts. Ebay is an excellent resource for the little things that you will need to fix your lathe. Hopefully you will find a real gem like I did that only needs some paint. Please let me know if anybody has questions about buying an old Southbend. I'll try to help out.

Jamie

[Bill Holland]

I am going to look at one this weekend Jamie, Your advice will be recieved greatly.
I know about testing the spindle bearings, chuck a piece of bar stock in the chuck, bring dial indicator, and put 75lbs of force towards you and away, and deflection should be within .0005 each way.
Man if you do that on the chinese mini lathe, the indicator wants to take off like a helicopter.

Also about .020 backlash on the crossfeed, compound.
I dont have a long straight edge for testing the lathe bed though. What else should I look for?

[Jamie Harris]

Here is a link to Dave's page on inspecting a used lathe. www.mermac.com/advicenew.html

Some of the things that I look for in addition to the overall condition of the machine are the bedways, the type of crud that is embedded in the parts, and the amount of tooling that the lathe includes. For the bedway, most old Southbends have a groove on the side of the V-way that faces you, right up near the headstock. The deeper the groove, the more wear the machine has and the looser it will be. I was able to find a lather that had no groove, and still had some scraping marks visible on most of the bed. That is a good thing. A small (shallow) groove is not too bad, just realize that the machine will not be quite as accurate as it could be. One trick I learned is to take a small wet stone to the V-ways to take the worn edge off of them. Do this at your own risk. Don't be scared of some backlash in the crossfeed leadscrew. It is easily compensated for when machining, and a new brass nut can be bought for $35 on Ebay.

You can tell a lot about a machine by the type of crud on it. My lathe has sawdust in the teeth of the drill chuck, and hidden in the the crevases around the motor. They say that turning wood on a metal lathe will shorten it's life but I found that not to be true. My lathe is in great shape, maybe it wasn't used that much. If you find grinding dust in or on the parts, run away (or atleast inspect it very closely). That will wear out a lathe in a hurry.

Another thing to look for is if the lathe has been taken apart. If the headstock has been removed (like mine was) it can take some time to get it back on the bed and into alignment. This is not a bad thing, just time consuming.

The best way to inspect a lathe is under power, with dial indicator in hand. You can tell a lot about the lathe if you can put a piece of drill rod in the chuck and run the indicator along the bar on the saddle. Realize that an old 3 jaw chuck will be inacurate, try to center the bar in a 4 jaw if you can. You can also push and pull on that bar lightly to see if there is play in the spindle bearings. They can be rebuilt for a small cost but that is a reason to lower the price. You can then take test cuts on the bar and see if the lathe is turning a taper or not. That taper could be attributed to the tailstock setover screw, but maybe not...

Finally the amount of tooling that comes with the lathe makes a huge difference. I have bought a lathe just because it had a collet closer and a V belt headstock, even though the lathe was crap. Good things are a toolholder,drill chuck, 3 jaw, 4 jaw, change gears,threading stop (bed clamp) live center, dog plate, and dogs. Great stuff would be a threading dial, collet closer and collets, V belt instead of flat belt, collet rack, under-mounted motor lathe on a cabinet, taper attachment, quick change toolpost, and milling attachment. If I found a lathe with all of those things and it was in good shape, I'd pay $1000 easily for it. The value of those parts is amaizing.

Southbend made 3 versions of the 9", the A, B, and C. The A has a quickchange gearbox, power crossfeed, and a boatload of accessories (which may or may not still be there). The B had the power crossfeed but no QC gearbox. It can be added later. The C had no power crossfeed and does not have the keyway cut in the leadscrew for power cross. It can also be turned into an A by adding a QC gearbox, new leadscrew, and a new apron. All of this stuff is available on Ebay. Be careful if you buy a model B or C. You want the lathe to include all of the change gears so you can cut threads. Those gears are very expensive to buy later if you don't have them.

I'm tired of typing now. Please ask if you have any specific questions.

Jamie

[Bill Holland]

Im using this same message in a few forums, save myself some typing
YEhhh!
ITs in Really good shape, some parts of ways still have the decorative checkering, extremely small ridges, A really nice American made 3 jaw chuck, forgot the name of it, bunch of tooling, some of the changegears(not all ) No wear on the leadscrew, all the gears look to be in Excellent shape, I did see one tooth missing off one of the back gears, does not affect operation from what I can tell, I also have the drive motor and drive assembly, not in picture.
I got it all for 475$ I need to clean it up, get rid of the surface rust.
THis lathe has been used by hobbyists, no factory work, atleast from seller said, and by the looks of it.
Oh yes, the SPindle is SMOOTH, not rough Lathe had lots of machine oil on it, so it's allways been well oiled from what I can tell.
Geez, feels good, the search is over.

[Jamie Harris]

Congrats Bill, I hope you have some spare time because a lathe rebuild can take a lot of it.

Jamie