While having absolutely no room in my small shop and no turning skills at all I decided that I needed a spinney apparatus. My search of the intertoobs has been painful, losing bids the last second and less then truthful/knowledgeable sellers. But I finally found an old piece of cast iron that was at the other end of the state.
I striped off 3 layers of gray paint to get to the Black tar like coating. I foam brushed 2 coats of Rust-oleum flat black to the base and Aluminum to the removable parts. The brushings in the head stock was in amazingly good shape. There were no dust/oil seals on the end of the spindles. My guess is they where felt and failed long ago. I replaced them with the common driven in rubber type seal.
There was no motor or carriage. For some reason I would like to think this lathe ran from belts drop off a shaft from the ceiling. Most likely the motor went bad and got lost. I built a carriage to hold the motor and transmission. I have ordered 20’ of flat belt and some alligator clips. I could make three belts for the cone pulley on the head stock and have 12 speeds. There is a forth step on the cone pulley and it is use to addressed the play in the shaft.
I have not found a lot of information on the web about this model. What I think I know is that this is an Oliver model 55 (obviously), it has a brass plate with SHOP NO. But no number stamped. So it was built between 1904 when Oliver started putting Oliver on there machines and 1907 when Number 1 was put on a table saw.
Any Other information about this lathe would be appreciated.
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