Found a Dalton Metal Lathe

[AdrianBoomer]

Found this in a scrape pile, loaded it up and brought it home.

Dalton "6" Lot 4. it has a relatively low serial number considering they made a few thousand of these. I think this is from approx. 1920.

I am sandblasting the castings, wire wheeling the moving parts and cleaning up all the surfaces. I'm going to paint it with a 2-part industrial black high gloss and give the japanning look if possible.



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[LXCam]

That's a really cool looking little lathe. Are you planning on using it or just making a show piece out of it?

 

[haptiq]

Thats a sweet find for someone like you willing and capable to refurb it. If you ask my wife, most of my tools were found in scrap piles

 

[Fretters]

Nice looking lathe.

 

[Provincial]

Nice work.

Since my last name is Dalton, I have a fondness for those lathes, but I have never seen one in the flesh.

 

[Oldtuleguy]

Cleaned up nice

 

[AdrianBoomer]

That's a really cool looking little lathe. Are you planning on using it or just making a show piece out of it?

I will absolutely be using it, I have the chucks and tooling which satin water....working on it piece by piece!

 

[2oolhound]

Bravo! nice to see it gutting a new lease on life.

 

[tombell572]

Daltons were great small lathes--that's a real find. If you're not aware of this site, check it for more info on Daltons: http://www.lathes.co.uk/dalton/index.html. At the risk of telling you what you already know, don't sandblast or wire wheel the precision bearing surfaces. A soak with WD, then push off rust with a putty knife, final clean-up with #0000 steel wool.

A great save!

Tom B.

 

[Old Man Roger]

That thing is cool! Late 1800's early 1900's ?

Do you have all gears for changing the feed rate?

It would be cool to hide the electric motor and run a line shaft with a belt from the ceiling..lol

 

[AdrianBoomer]

I pulled the babbet before sandblasting. They rolled right out nicely.
I have a full set of change gears, and a smattering of old collets and the collet chuck. Int he water logged box I found a 3 and 4 jaw chuck which my milling friend/mentor already tore apart and put back together

The only issue I have is one bad gear on the carriage, Somebody either forced a cut or took to big a cut and one gear is damaged. I know there is a company in Boston that I should be able to find one and mill it to my specs.

Ya, this is a cool find as I had been looking for a small but decent lathe. I like the vintage, I think the turn of the century through the 20s was a great era for Lathes.

Ill post some more pics of my progress soon.

 

[tombell572]

Adrian--http://www.bostongear.com. They've helped me out before.

Tom B.

 

[Old Man Roger]

I pulled the babbet before sandblasting. They rolled right out nicely.
I have a full set of change gears, and a smattering of old collets and the collet chuck. Int he water logged box I found a 3 and 4 jaw chuck which my milling friend/mentor already tore apart and put back together

The only issue I have is one bad gear on the carriage, Somebody either forced a cut or took to big a cut and one gear is damaged. I know there is a company in Boston that I should be able to find one and mill it to my specs.

Ya, this is a cool find as I had been looking for a small but decent lathe. I like the vintage, I think the turn of the century through the 20s was a great era for Lathes.

Ill post some more pics of my progress soon.

Thats awesome, having all the gears makes it fully functional. 4 Jaw chuck is all I have. It only takes a little longer to use, once you get used to it. Comes in handy with off center work.

 

[AdrianBoomer]

Today, I basically continued to clean stuff, pulleys and gears, I got the carriage assembly moving freely. Im starting to feel optimistic about this.

I have gears and random tooling, nothing special or any great quantity but it is what I found laying around the lathe and the rotting box everything was mostly contained in LOL. They are a couple tools posts and a left, right and center cutting tool. Threading tools will come later once I am operational.

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[wraptor]

Post a video when it is up and running, the straight cut gears will sing!

 

[Htscheg]

Awesome find

 

[mkat1951]

Very cool, would have been such a shame to see it scrapped.

 

[Old Man Roger]

You'll be making chips in no time.. Any Idea how old the motor is? I have one from 1914 that came with my old lathe.

 

[AdrianBoomer]

You'll be making chips in no time.. Any Idea how old the motor is? I have one from 1914 that came with my old lathe.

Havent gotten that far. I have discovered that the lathe is 1914/15 based on serial number. My research has also taught me other Daltons had Century Motors. I will do the countershaft tear-down and motor rebuild once I finsh the lathe. I will need the lathe running under power in order to do the shimming and alignments of the cutting center etc. I will keep you posted on that.

Old Man Roger, do you have a Dalton? and what do you know about it?

Mine came from here....
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I got the lathe put back together today. Every single piece has been either sandblasted, wirewheels. Every crew and bolt cleaned and lubed. Now that I know what I have, it will be easy for me to take apart each section and paint and do a final assembly. Im excited.
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[Old Man Roger]

I have discovered that the lathe is 1914/15 based on serial number. My research has also taught me other Daltons had Century Motors.

Old Man Roger, do you have a Dalton? and what do you know about it?

Sorry mine is an 1890's RDM, not a Dalton, a very similar design though.

I took the Century motor off, I didn't want to wear it out. It still worked when I took it off. As you can see by the dirt and grime, it gets used. I don't have the patience for a refurb.. lol

 

[AdrianBoomer]

Wow, very close in design. That is interesting! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Old Man Roger]

Wow, very close in design. That is interesting! Thanks for sharing.

Sorry I couldn't be more help. I love seeing people keeping this old iron working

The pic below is kind of what I was talking about earlier. Keeps it close to the wall, and you could hide the electric motor. Make it look like it was powered by a water wheel..lol

 

[AdrianBoomer]

I had the lathe completely together yesterday, with all the tooling and bits it came with finally rust free. I have since taken it all apart for paint. I will update when I get it back together in her new black colour. I am using Amercoat 2-part industrial high gloss paint which will stand up to the work this lathe will be doing in it's near future.

tomorrrow I will sandblast the countershaft. I have a rebuilt GE motor sitting waiting for a new home also
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[Old Man Roger]

Hows the bed? Any play in the table close to the chuck?

 

[AdrianBoomer]

no wear at all, the bed is unbelievably clean. I was pleasantly surprised. I don't think this thing was used much to be honest. I think it was lightly used in the machine shop it came out of and when a user crashed it (who knows how long ago) it was out aside and never used again until the shop closed and the PO bought out everything and left this thing in the scrap pile

 

[Old Man Roger]

What a find.

 

[rsanter]

Good on you for saving it, but I am not thrilled with the sandblasting being done on that need to be careful to stay away from machined surfaces.
Personally I use Evaporust and I have had chucks that were seized that I dunked in Evaporust for a couple days and they freed up. I took them apart and we back with the Evaporust.
On many bare metal parts I will machine blue them to help reduce future rusting

 

[AdrianBoomer]

All machined surfaces were heavily taped off and only the castings where hit. ALl machined surfaces, beds etc were scrapped and polished to 2500 grit. Babbets were removed before cleaning. Things are feeling really good on this. I seal surfaces with Johnsons wax.

 

[AdrianBoomer]

The blue is 2-part primer.

Here are the ways looking down from the head stock.

and from the tail stock.

 

[AdrianBoomer]

A quick update on the project. Coming together as planned, no surprises, actually a pretty easy lillte machine to work on. The set up will take some time, shimming and getting things just right. But I am very happy thus far. I am going to add needle bearings on the spindle to fix the end play and keep the babbet cool.

I will do a final polish of all the machine surfaces once the rebuild is complete.

Staked to hear this thing run!!!

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[Old Man Roger]

Looks awesome. Don't mess with the bed when you start polishing.

 

[larry4406]

This is a really cool resurrection!

 

[AdrianBoomer]

i got it on a stand that I built last week. The top is 3/16 steel plate. I am sure there are more practical and better stand designs, I just treated this as a primitive period piece more than anything. Motor and lathe have their final install and I am waiting for the new leather belt to be made. I'm starting to get excited.

Here are a few detail shots of how I mounted things up etc. i adapted an OXA QCTP with a 5/5 riser/washer so the tool is at the cutting center. I look forward to getting running and get advice from anyone with experience it really old lathes!

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[Schmidlapper]

Fantastic Restoration work, bordering on art also.

 

[AdrianBoomer]

Fantastic Restoration work, bordering on art also.

hey, Thanks! I tend to treat my restorations as Art. This one in particular because I struggled with what to do, the original stand slipped away from the lathe months before I rescued it and the guy would not sell it back to me sadly. So this is definitely an art project LOL

 

[Provincial]

Nice looking stand!

 

[Ancient Iron]

Nice to see you saved a piece of history. I'm glad to see it went to someone who will appreciate it Good luck with it

 

[SAA44-40]

Adrian- excellent work, great detail. Fine job on the stand. You sir, are a craftsman!

 

[DonkDonk]

This turned out amazing

 

[Htscheg]

Simply beautiful!!!