glacially slow machine shop build

moving that lathe... impressive

Please do! Slowly following

Or is it following slowly?

Good thing I saved a PDF of my build thread yesterday since pirate isn't even loading for me today. (and of course it starts working a couple minutes after I post this).

This is the build thread so far. I assume most have seen it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u0q...ew?usp=sharing

Right now I'm fucking around with the lathe in the middle of my shop trying to build a motor mount for it that isn't a massive waste of space like the original one. I've got the tubes bent and the hinge made, just need to do all the little pain in the ass stuff like making tabs in the right places to hold the motor, transmission, switch, etc.

While I was fucking around on Google Drive I found a zip of all the pics my brother and I took when I bought the lathe. I'll post them up tonight after work.

Finally went through the pics from when I got the lathe 2yr ago.

Here's from the original CL ad. IIRC I paid $400.

The date on those pics was 5/22/18 so that's when I saw the ad. I went to get it the week of July 4 2018. It was in this guy's heavy truck shop. He was getting rid of it because his other one was better. Mine has the bigger chuck though. Here's pics of his shop and other lathe.

He even had a normal size (under 2000sf) house on the property. This was somewhere about an hour northwest of Bangor. I hope to live like that one day.

He said his skid steer really didn't like lifting the lathe all at once. We took the legs off and stuck it on some cribbing in a box truck, tied it down only at the rear and then drove to central MA and did a high precision parking job.

Also I'm pretty sure this was the last time the pipe bender got any use until when I took it out a few weeks ago to make the motor mount for the lathe.

Here's all the pics we took once we got it home. I think my brother was the photographer for most/all of this. We found a nice bunch of chips under the carriage. Granted those might be more than a century worth but I think they justify putting way wipers on the "nice to have" list. We took some disassembly pics of the wiring and the apron. The transmission is a T96 so that gives you an idea of when this lathe was last touched. I want to eventually upgrade to have a 4spd mounted under the headstock and driving a three step pulley for more speed range but that is a long time off. The bicycle was chilling outside the Uhaul place where we returned the truck at ~1am after having it for close to 48hr. At that time my white Legacy was in the garage for a timing job. This week it's in the garage for crash damage. Funny how things come full circle.

And from there I didn't touch it until this spring. Read the other thread if you want to see about that. Right now I'm building a transmission and motor mount that's a lesser waste of valuable space.

Picked up a 15hp motor for the lathe last night. Despite having a totally worn the fuck out steering shaft the Aerostar makes a great rural highway cruising vehicle. No way in hell I'm gonna use it straight away. I have to build/buy a better phase converter and make a mount to stick the motor and transmission under the lathe so it doesn't waste tons of space. The seller was trying to clean out a garage bay and insisted I take a bunch of electrical disconnect boxes.

Haven't done jack shit. All the shitboxes need work so the motor mount for the lathe has just been sitting there waiting for me to tack the motor plate.

Brought a 240 home. Here's me test fitting for motor mounts.

How are you planning on mounting the motor underneath the lathe? Go any links to a setup like this? I have a similar lathe and the previous owner installed the motor off the back causing it to sit at an angle and eat up space. I have room to install overhead like yours, but am interested in how you plan to install everything below. Awesome lathe!

Kinda hard to explain but I'm gonna have a flat belt pulley shaft under the existing one and I'm gonna drive that with the motor and a transmission for gear reduction. It helps that this is a decently large lathe giving me room to mount stuff.

Not really any progress. Been wrenching on shitboxes and doing house stuff every weekend. This weekend I went to my parents place and grabbed a little old mill I'd left in their garage. Aerostar hauled it and five totes full of car parts like a champ.

The little dolly I made for the lathe worked great for this too. One we got it balanced my 70yo dad had no problem moving it around.