Below 265 SQ/FT Dutch's small workshop thread.

[dutchgray]

Since I now have a proper workshop space, other than my small single garage at home, I thought I ought to start a thread about it.
Pictures will follow once I have finished making the space but its an area in a local farmers barn I know, approx 240 sq foot with 10 foot ceiling, the outside walls are insulated and it has a decent 3 phase supply.

Today I went about 20 miles north to a small machine shop that shut and bought some tooling, I have missed all the machinery and most of the good stuff but still got this.
View media item 99714View media item 99715View media item 99717View media item 99716
2 tappers, a quick chuck system on a mt2 with a tapping head and a bunch of mt2 & 3 sleeves, an entire tray of Metric taps and dies, with BA and one large pipe tap thrown in, all good makes, up to M36 in the taps a tray of mt2 shank drills, 55 of them, they are mostly good makes are sharp and the tapers are in good condition with 2 drill chucks on mt3, one Jacobs, hand full of mt sleeves, a couple other things not shown, 2 6" wire wheels for bench grinder, Moore & Wright depth mic, tray of mostly metric cap screws.
This lot was £500 which is not cheap but not expensive either, I had been beaten to the mt3 shank drills, but may go back for the unified & Whitworth taps and dies and the reamers.

 

[Jack84]

Would love to see your new place. Subbed so I don’t miss it.

Nice catch on tooling.

 

[dutchgray]

Well I did go back and get the rest of the taps and dies, UNC, UNF, BSW and BSF, and the reamers and a 3' circle by 1" thick steel plate which should be useful for something. £180 for all that.
View media item 99829View media item 99830View media item 99831
I will take some pictures of the new work shop when it actually looks like a workshop.

 

[dutchgray]

Been a while but the Corona virus situation has meant I have had very little work the last few weeks, this has meant lots of workshop time.
View of one side
View media item 103152Its all insulated with 50mm foam board and lined with 1/2" ply, I have a 4' by 8' entrance door which does make getting machines in a bit of a challenge. Ended up at 250 sq foot of space.

My scrap guy had all of this steel available, much of it has labels with the grade marked on, about a third of a ton of steel and stainless steel. £200 well spent.
View media item 103153
My Electrician finished the 3 phase panel this week so I currently have 3 3 phase sockets, a single 240V below the panel and 4no 5' twin LED lights, its nice and bright.
View media item 103151
I bought this drill bit grinder today, it works, 3 phase 1.5HP motor, obviously very old, needs a new coolant system and a motor starter. Does 1/4" to 3" bits. Was £500.
View media item 103150
The gang drill, one spindle runs perfectly, another the starter isn't latching, one is missing a starter at present and the last doesn't do anything when you press the switch, needs completely re wiring I think.

 

[Madone_si]

I liking how this workshop is going

 

[Biff Lungren]

So that is one machine with 4 drill presses?

 

[dutchgray]

So that is one machine with 4 drill presses?

Yes, they are 1hp 9 speed gear driven drills, 1" rated in steel, 2 have power feeds and reversing gear, the other two are manual, it stands almost 8' tall and weighs about 1.4 Ton.
Its total overkill and takes up far to much space, but it will be worth it once its its fully up and running, I expect it was made in the 50's, later versions had lockouts to prevent you changing gears with the motors running but mine is pre that.
The price was right and it was fairly local.

 

[dutchgray]

Well I got the drill grinder working
View media item 103282Thats a 1 9/64" drill, I then tried it in some 1/2" plate on the big drill, used just a 5mm pilot and went straight in full sized at 100 rpm, worked fine.
But I found its a 2" grinder not the 3" as advertised, not that it matters, it would do over capacity but its not really meant to.

Then I built a small workbench out of leftover timber, its 2.2m by 0.6m by 1.05m tall.
View media item 103283
I put my new Beta box on there on a small riser so you don't have to clean off the bench to open the bottom drawer.
View media item 103284
I also messed about with the gang drill and all 4 motors run, its just the DOL starters that need replacing, one is completely dead, one will work but isn't happy and one is missing. The last is good.

 

[dutchgray]

Better picture of the lathe
View media item 103830I took a 175 thou by 5 thou per rev cut in aluminium with it today, have been cleaning brass chips out of various bits of it, they seem to get everywhere, the previous owner did say they used it for making brass bushings quite a bit.
I need to make a better tool post hold down handle, the lathes original doesn't clear the tool holder clamps on the holder so you cant tighten it down if you turn the compound to a more sensible angle.
Will probably just find a nut and use a deep offset spanner for now.

 

[dutchgray]

I put this old 3' by 2' shelving unit back in, there were 3 of these but the others went else where. I made the spacer so it could be secured to the wall as the purlin was in the way, its a good gap for short bar stock to go and stops stuff falling down the back of the shelves.
View media item 104854The second real part on the lathe
View media item 104953My brother wanted some feet for his workbench that is made out of tube, so I turned them out of some Tufnol I had, I used a hole saw to cut out the blanks, they are 72mm by 72mm with the reduced section made to slip fit in the tube legs. Stinks up the workshop machining it and makes a right mess of the lathe.

 

[dutchgray]

Machining a 4 step pulley down to a 3 step, I only need the 3 steps and it wouldn't fit on the motor shaft at 4 steps, this is for the Taiwan 16 speed pillar drill I was given.
View media item 105156Got some bar ends from the scrap man, 46kg of steel, stainless steel and aluminium.
View media item 105155

 

[dutchgray]

Got a new to me tool this week
View media item 106182View media item 106178A British built Bridgeport Series 1 2hp BR2J2, in nice condition, from the early 80's I believe.
View media item 106179View media item 106177The table had to come off to make it fit out the door from where I bought it so I got a good look at the ways, the Y axis has a little more wear
View media item 106181But nothing terrible.
View media item 106180The 6" Abwood swivel vice came with it, was dirty from storage but is otherwise hardly used.
Its a very nice tight machine and apart from the power quill feed forward neutral reverse button being stuck everything works perfectly.
It came with a little tooling, 2 R8 to morse taper adapters, the Italian Jacobs keyless chuck, set of 5 Imperial collets, a DTI on a rod and a bunch of end mills.

 

[dutchgray]

The other stuff that came from the same source as the Bridgeport
Pedestal grinder, takes 10" by 1" wheels, 3/4 HP 3 phase, haven't worked out who made it yet.
View media item 106258Motor in the bottom by Brooks
View media item 106259This BOC oil filled transformer arc welder, 180 Amp, needs looking at supposedly, it definitely needs a new power lead as the rubber is breaking down around the conductors, came with a decent set of welding leads.
View media item 106256View media item 106257and two Anvils which are shown in the anvil thread.

 

[magnusk750]

Impressing machinery. What are you working on? From the choice of taps and dies, perhaps we can hope for some britishness?

 

[dutchgray]

Mostly working on some of the machinery I have bought that needs fixing at the moment.

 

[dutchgray]

Forget about this for a while, been busy.
Had to rearrange the shop and sell some stuff to get my new lathe in, Dean Smith and Grace 13 by 42 its about 2 1/2 tons, its mostly in position, needs to move about 2 foot more but I will clean it up and get it going first. 12 speeds 24 to 1000 rpm, D1-6 camlock spindle, 1 1/2" spindle bore, 1957 machine.
I pulled the coolant pump out today and it was predictably extremely grim in the tank, has a steady rest and a 10" 3 jaw but thats it tooling wise

You know its good when they have a warning label telling you not to use feeds over 20 thou per rev over 420 rpm
The bed is 10" over the ways, the whole thing is ridiculously heavy compared to the common makes of lathes you see in home workshops.

 

[dutchgray]

So I thought I would spend a couple hours after work looking in the headstock of the DSG, for one the brake was inoperative (its not under power yet but you could roll it over by hand and you shouldn't be able to with the brake on) removal of a rear cover that covers the brake actuator and part of the clutch linkage showed why, a pair of nuts had come undone and let the brake linkage come apart, an easy fix. The second was you couldn't put it in reverse, you can push on the clutch and make it run backwards but it won't engage and as of yet I can't work out why.
The other thing I did was remove the electrical cabinet lid, surprising its not been bodged all to hell like most old machines seem to be, there has been some re wiring in there but its mostly as built.

I am fairly sure its got taper roller bearings on the spindle and not plain bearings, there just isn't enough space where the bearings are for plain ones, it also has a third ball bearing in the middle of the spindle. Inside the headstock is just beautiful and there seems to be very little wear anywhere in there. The headstock cover and the other larger ones are all aluminium, it was still pretty heavy to lift though.

 

[dutchgray]

Well I got the chuck key I ordered and was able to get the chuck off the camlock nose (the lathe did not come with a key to fit the camlocks or any other chuck than the 10" 3 jaw) the chuck was well stuck on, doubt it had been removed in years.

Well some absolute waste of space previous user has turned off some of the reference surface or otherwise messed it up, why I have no idea but luckily they haven't totally trashed the spindle nose, but why touch it at all.
You can see how much has been removed by looking at the holes for the camlock pins, about 1mm I would say.

I also drained the feed box oil which was pretty horrible and had a small amount of water in it and removed the threading chart lid and glass (well 8mm acrylic), I found some remnants of the actual glass floating around under the chart, 5mm toughened glass shards, which most likely are in the bottom of the gearbox so will have to take the lid off and have a look.
The 8mm acrylic is too thick and has forced the moving cursor to rub on the thread chart, which has scratched parts of the chart and twisted the cursor. So I need to buy a new piece of glass and fix that

 

[dutchgray]

Got the feed box lid off, a well engineered affair with a decent chain drive to move the gear selector, a fair amount of dirt in there and more wear on the gears than in the headstock but its not bad, the oil level was below the oil sight glass and when drained I got approx 3/4 of what should be in there, the oil pump pick up is right at the bottom of the sump so it would have oiled fine if the pump was working, the sight glass that shows the oil flowing is dirty enough you can't see through it, so I don't know if it was, but the headstock glass was the same and that pump was flowing a lot of oil.
I was right about the glass, there is some shards in the bottom I need to clean out.
The thread chart shows how many options I have with the standard change gears, you can do much more with the alternatives, it was black with silver text once, very faded now but you can still read it fine, it actually cleaned up well so will be going back in as is.

 

[dutchgray]

Ho more pictures but I got the DSG lathe wired up and it runs very nicely, smooth and quiet.
Got the feed box all cleaned out and refilled the oil, my manual is for a later variant of the lathe and it states the feed box needs 3 pints, I put nearly 4 litres in to get it to the mark which is around 7 pints. Ran it over by hand to check the oil pump was working and bolted the lid back on.
Even the coolant pump works, pumped out what would come out then pulled the pump to find a lot of thick greasy sludge.
Then I found a drain plug under the tank so pulled that so what is liquid can drain, will scrape out the sludge in a couple days.
I was surprised by how small the coolant tank is, I reckon its only about 3 gallons.

 

[dutchgray]

Got all the covers off (they are all aluminium) and have begun cleaning. It's very dirty.
Then I got the motor out, which I don't think has been cleaned since it was put in there in 57, found the belt tension adjustment pin is missing and the motor has just been sitting on the belts with its own weight and the motor compartment lid was obviously hit at some time and one of the mounting studs was snapped off, the other bent, so have 3 parts to make.

 

[dutchgray]

more pictures.

 

[dutchgray]

2 hours after work cleaning the motor with paraffin, the bearings feel dry and a little noisy but it rolls over very well, I took the oil/ grease line off that feeds the rear bearing and could find no evidence of oil or grease inside it, I tried to pump some oil through it and nothing will go through the ******, so I removed it and the front one and left them soaking in the paraffin. Hopefully they can be made to work, otherwise new ones will be needed.
It doesn't look to bad though for 64 years old, I believe it to be original, it's painted in the same grey as the parts of the lathe that haven't been repainted.

 

[dutchgray]

A whole saturday afternoon spent cleaning the motor compartment, its not real clean as there's parts you just can't reach properly and the castings are rough so hard to clean, but there was a 1/4" thickness of old oil, grease and chips in places on the horizontal surfaces when I started. Then the motor was put back and the belts refitted, the grease ******* which had been soaked in paraffin were cleaned out, tested and then refitted and I greased the motor bearings. I need to refit the belt tensioner still.

 

[dutchgray]

Made a pair of replacement studs to hold the motor cover on, 1/2" Whitworth on the male end, 3/8" Whitworth on the female, I had taps and dies so that made it easy.
Then put all the covers back on the end of the machine.
Also picked up a new machine, a Clarkson tool and cutter grinder, which cost me £645.

 

[dutchgray]

Been working on the DSG, dismantled the cross slide and taper turning attachment and then cleaning all the grease out. Found the gib adjustment screw was bent, had to cut it out, will have to make a replacement.
There is a lot of grot to clean out from everywhere and more wear in the slides than you really want to see.

 

[dutchgray]

Also bought another lathe, which I don't really need nor have room for, but it was really local and cheap, plus it has little wrong with it, needs a new dol motor starter and a drive belt as the leather one is knackered and a bit of a clean and oil.
It's a Smart and Brown model M MK2.
4" center height by 18", largely a copy of a Boley.
Plain bronze bearings, which seem very good, collets and a 3 jaw chuck, travelling steady but no fixed, change gears but only came with what's fitted, a carriage stop and a big tub of quite rusty tooling, quite a lot of hss bits.
Has a single phase motor fitted but the coolant is still 3 phase.
400kg or 900lb ish made between 1948 and 1959 or so.
It's in pretty decent shape for an old plain bearing flat bed lathe and should do some really nice work.

 

[dutchgray]

Back to the DSG
Finally got the saddle separated from the apron, it took some hammering via a block of wood to get it apart. The apron oil ways were predictably full of grease, which I have begun to clean out. Note the factory scraping on the apron top surface. It also has a thrust ball bearing for the saddle lock, which I thought may have been overkill for something that only moves a 1/4 turn.

 

[dutchgray]

The guy I bought my Bridgeport from got in touch and gave me a friend of his phone number, he had a pair of Victoria universal dividing heads and didn't need both of them.
£400 later netted me this dividing head, still in its packing crate and still coated in cosmaline, the head may have been used but I don't think any of the accessories have ever been out the box.
It has a tailstock, machinest jack, change gear set and banjo for linking to a mill (doubt I will ever use that) output drive with a center, which is on a 40 taper.

The guy is in forklift repair and sales and has had his current workshop since the 80's.
There was other machines available but I don't have the space unfortunately at the moment but I will probably be back sometime as there was a lot of tooling.
He told me the dividing heads came from Denbigh when they shut, they were a machine tool maker.

 

[dutchgray]

I forgot about this for a couple years.

Workshop got very full so I have just got hold of a 20' shipping container for extra storage space.

Also just picked up a nice set of machine parallels, NOS British military from 1955.
Found locally they were £85.

Should be better quality than the Chinese ones.

 

[dutchgray]

Bought myself a new toy.

Arboga RM 3508 (I think)
Radial Arm drill
£1,500
Couple hours driving, it has a few issues, a few holes in the table, need to run a MT reamer in the spindle to clean it up a bit, the spindle rack needs fixing back on the spindle as it's moving around and at some point someone tried to weld it on. Needs a drum switch so it can be reversed for power tapping. But it works, power feeds work, all speed ranges work, head moves nice.

 

[sawduststeve]

Bought myself a new toy.

Arboga RM 3508 (I think)
Radial Arm drill
£1,500
Couple hours driving, it has a few issues, a few holes in the table, need to run a MT reamer in the spindle to clean it up a bit, the spindle rack needs fixing back on the spindle as it's moving around and at some point someone tried to weld it on. Needs a drum switch so it can be reversed for power tapping. But it works, power feeds work, all speed ranges work, head moves nice.

Cool, nice addition to all your other machines.

Steve

 

[dutchgray]

DSG update.
It has been in use for some time, made a lot of parts on it.
Main issues are it has a lot of wear in the Cross slide, mainly because it was missing way wipers, I am in process to make some, the gib has been shimmed as it was out of adjustment, it needs the nut shim grinding down to take some back lash out.
The brake has also never worked, but I have now found out why.

When I got the machine the nuts had undone and fallen off the rod that pulls the break on, luckily the rear cover has a ledge that caught them so they didn't go in the headstock sump.
Refitting them didn't make it work so it got left at the time.

Since I was doing an oil change I thought I would investigate further.

That's what the brake clutch mechanism looks like in the back of the headstock, brake is on the lower lever, the middle one pulls the brake on when the clutches are out, the vertical bar on the top drives the clutch fork behind it.
Middle bar removed, you can see the outline left from the cam that pulls the brake on

That's the back of the middle bar, basically in near perfect condition. The square piece runs on the next part.

Thats the problem 66 years of wear on that piece on the FWD clutch side, almost none on the reverse, the brake doesn't work because there isn't enough lift left to pull it on, if you adjust it to where it works there isn't enough clearance to get the lathe in reverse, the small V in the middle is the center detent for the clutches. Its not very hard, I have ordered some ground flat stock to make a new one, should be fine left in the raw state.


The oil filter, it has a magnetic bit inside but it appears its a just a cylinder wrapped in stainless wire. Oil is fed in from the outside and comes out between the two larger diameters at the bottom, which are a good fit in the housing, so there won't be much bypass.


Oil drain plug and the tool I made to undo it, my biggest flat screwdriver wasn't doing it and it's buried in the front of the lathe under the feed shaft in a small hole so you can't get on it with pliers or anything.

 

[dutchgray]

Have put it all back together and now have an effective working brake on the DSG lathe



This machine, as happy as I am with it is now for sale, mainly because I went and bought another one.
An 1972 1307 by 40 with 16 spindle speeds, 29 to 2240 rpm, metric machine with a hydraulic copier (which can be set up for taper turning) this newer lathe is in much better condition, has improvements they made over the years, is only about 45 miles away and was available for a sensible price.
I would really like a 16" or 17" swing machine but a much nicer 13" will do.
I just have to get it sometime.

I will miss being able to do inch screwcutting without messing with change gears however, but metric will be much easier.

 

[dutchgray]

Still not sold the old 13-1 DSG lathe, got it stored in a shipping container.

The new machine is in the workshop and wired in, still sat on wooden blocks, need to get it down and leveled.

Have been going through it. A few minor problems but nothing that can't be fixed in time.

No pics yet of the whole machine but here is a couple of the thread dial parts, which are fairly ruined because it was run without the plastic cover to keep the chips out.

It's a compound setup that allows you to use the thread dial for the native metric thread pitches that divide into the 6mm pitch leads crew, the small centre dial, then a gear arrangement that drives the outer dial for inch thread pitches and odd metric ones, so long as you keep to a 400mm length of the lathe travel.


That gear isn't in mesh with the leadscrew, it would mesh with the gear that does, but which is missing from my machine, I guess it was destroyed when the upper part of the gear train got full of chips and likely locked up.

I will need to make a gear hob that matches the leadscrew and make that gear, plus most likely the other 3 as they are all pretty bad, plus new dials and the plastic cover and engraved info sheet.

Job for later though as honestly I don't do much single point threading and a DSG with clutch drive forward and reverse with a good spindle brake is one of the easiest lathes you will ever get to single point without dropping the half nuts out.

I have also been making new rubber wipers for it as they were all worn out.

 

[dutchgray]

Also bought an Elliott 18S shaper the same week the lathe was delivered.

I had seen it in the guys workshop a couple years ago but didn't have the space then, it popped up on ebay so I got in touch after the first week and did a deal. Was £1250.


It's in pretty good shape, came from a research facility and the guy that had it bought a job lot of machines and never used the shaper, for about 40 years.

Just a basic machine, no power down feed, has the original vice, oiling is total loss, 3 hp, 18" stroke, 4 speeds, 4 feed rates.

I made a very short clip of a test cut.

Seems to work well enough, nothing was done to try and get the part set up accurately (which was just a flame cut chunk of scrap steel) or the machine and it came out with 10 thou taper between both cut surfaces. I need to clean up the vice as it has a fair amount of rust on its precision surfaces and check how tight all the ways are set.

 

[dutchgray]

Been doing some more test cutting on the shaper, in some EN1A leaded (12L14) steel after grinding the tool a bit better or using a wide welded HSS lathe parting/ grooving tool.


I got up to a 200 thou depth and 10 thou feed. (which is the minimum feed) which still didn't seem to really tax the machine.

 

[dutchgray]

Another short clip, 150 thou depth, 10 thou feed

 

[dutchgray]

And more with a parting tool.

 

[dutchgray]

Got the shaper vice properly bolted down, I had been using some of my mill clamping kit, but one I want it available for use on the mill and two it was a bit small.
First I modified some 5/8" T nuts on the shaper, then I made some heavy 8mm thick washers on the lathe, including a quick arbor to hold them for a chamfer, they had to be 8mm as I had 2 1/4" bolts when 2" would have been perfect.
Plus a pic of the lathe with its lid off.