Well I hadn't planned on writing this post but since I had a few good days decided to put up one final post before I go on Holidays.
First thing I did was correct the issue with my tailstock on the #39. When I had centres in the tailstock and the headstock they did not line up on the horizontal plane. My guess was that there was around 20thous difference between the two. So I ordered up a package of brass shims and carefully cut some shims up to place between the two bottom plates of the Tailstock. Luckily the Tailstock has a split bed to allow the movement forward and back and there is enough movement to place shims in there. I first inserted 15thous then added another 5thous and finally ended up with 25thous worth of shims between the two sole plates to get the tailstock centre up to the height of the headstock centre. I used a precision ground test bar that I purchased awhile ago to prove the work. When this test bar was between centres I rode a dial indicator on the carriage up and down the test bar. The test bar is approx 12 inches long with 2mt taper at one end giving about 8-9 inches of calibrated round stock. When the 25 thous shims were in the dial indicator dropped about 2 thous in the middle of the bar and came back to zero at the tailstock end of the bar. I'm very happy with this. I'll include three pictures one showing the initial difference between centres. The second one showing the layout of the first setup of shim stock and the last picture shows the final placement of the two centres with the shim stock installed.

 I then decided that I would start working on cleaning and prepping the lathe bed for the #86 lathe. First thing I did was clean out the inside of the webs beneath the lathe bed and give them a quick coat of paint. I still had some Blue metal paint left so that's what they got. Later on i'll give it a coat of most likely flat black before the bed is mated to the rest of the body. I then carefully cleaned the back "t" slot with a razor blade some 400 grit sandpaper. Cleaned out the slot with laquer thinner and then gave the exterior of the "t" slot a cleaning with polishing compound. Once all the painting it done will go back and use more polishing compound to shine this section up. I also stripped, scraped, sanded and finally primed the back side of the lathe bed. I initially wanted to use water based products so I bought the water based Tremclad primer. All the labeling said it was designed for metal the only issue they stated was that if going on bare metal do not leave the metal for any length of time and to not apply with high humidity levels. So soon as I cleaned it I immediately primed it. After about one hour I looked at the paint and it looked like there were all tiny little specks of rust showing. So I cleaned all the paint off the body however there really was no rusting showing under the paint so not sure why those little brown specks were there. However for my peace of mind once all the paint was removed and the area cleaned up again I sprayed it with oil based primer. Here are some pictures showing the inner webs painted, the "t" slot cleaned, polished and then oiled. Lastly the lathe body cleaned and then primed. I was in the local NAPA store looking at paint brochures and found a paint colour, Metallic Charcoal Grey, which I think will be the colour I end up using for the exterior of the lathe body.

 Well on Friday off to see Mom and Dad and then off to Kalamazoo to see my Grandmother for her 101st birthday. Also plan to pick up some pieces I ordered from EBay since shipping them across the border is ridiculous and they're much cheaper across the border.
So see you back here on or around the 9th of June.

Harold