Hello fellow WW's
Here is shop tour #3
It will take me a few more tours untill I have shown all of my shop to you all. Now you might ask why is lou dragging this out? The reason I want to present this information in the way I do is so that as you continue to advance into your hobby or business venture, that some of what I have found out might be of help to you. BTW I am still learning about all of this. I have met a couple of guys that I bounce things off before going forward and this has been a big help.
What I wanted to show you all today is one of my most pleasurable tools to use in my shop.
It is a early 1900's "American Woodworking Machinery #9 patternmakers lathe"
It was completly original when I bought it, and I have since made some modifications that are worth looking at. The Lathe was originally leather belt driven, but with an electric motor and gear box setup. It seems that "Drive All Corp" developed a motor / gear box and foundation kit that could be simply bolted on to lathes such as this if the end user was going to power it by electricity and not use "overhead line shafts". What American and other early machine builders seemed to have done is buy this "electric motor and gear box kit" and bolt it on to their existing set of lathes.
Now you REAL old timers know what a pattern shop is, but I ( only 47 old ) had no idea up until a few years ago. Pattern shops are still around, but they are in the decline because much of our casting and foundry work is going to China. The pattern shop would build wooden patterns of the particular casting which would be used to form the negative image in the sand mixture in which molten metal would be poured. I realize that some of you creekers know much more about this and maybe worked in a foundry, so please forgive my feeble attempt at explaining this.
Well pattern shops had the best type IMHO of woodworking equipment that is suitable for traditional cabinet makers and ww's like us. True furniture factories had some, but much of their equipemnt was meant to just spit out one particular item ( i.e. straight line rip saws are always in furniture factories and never in a pattern shop... that is where you will find the northfield and oliver table saws ).
In order to optimze this lathe for today, I have made a few simple modifications.
1. I removed the "cross ways" on the machine. Patternmakers lathes really look like a metal lathe, with the traditional geared cross ways and tool holders. They can't thread to my knowlege ( could be some that do ).
2. I only use the more traditional tool rest on my lathe
3. The entire head stock was retooled to use modern timing belts and sprockets as opposed to the leather belts. It passes the nickel test!!!
4. The original motor was replaced with a reliance "Super Heavy Duty Inverter grade 3 hp motor", along with a VFD that is really quite nice.
As you can see there are a couple of real nice features on this machine
1. It has very large babbit bearings that really run pretty true. Babbit is a problem when you want to go higher than 3000 rpm, but they are great for a wood lathe and can take unbelievable abuse. They have an oil cup that you give a squirt of oil to once in a while.
2. It weighs about 2500 lbs and has a very wide stance. In fact of all of the pattern lathes I have looked at this is about the widest stance I have found.
3. It can turn 7 feet between centers and can also turn outboard as well ( the lathe is about 11 feet long ) .
4. The 4 speed oil bath gear box has ratio of 1:1 all the way down to 4:1. With the VFD drive that gives me a range of about 3000 rpm to 15 rpm with excellent regulation.
Finally, there is another American comming up for sale in about 15 days. If you are interested in it let me know and I will pm you with the info.
Thanks for looking and please feel free to ask questions about this or other machines as I post them in the up comming weeks
lou
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