Well weather's not the greatest, overcast and cloudy with possible rain showers coming so no use going for a little stroll. All cleaned up after going out for supper so no use going back into the shop to work. I guess this would be a good time to write up the blog for the last few weeks.

Before I get to far into this dissertation a little side note. One of the owners of a similar Hardinge Cataract has decided he wants to sell his machine. This one is Ser#44 built in 1917. The lathe is located in NE Ohio and he is asking 2500$ for everything he has. If you are interested in this lathe you can contact him at markusfu(at)hotmail(dot)com Just to give you an idea of what he has here are a couple of pictures of his lathe.

Now on to my story. As you know I went on vacation to visit my Grandmother for her 101st Birthday with my parents for the last week of May. Earlier this year I bought an overhead drive system from a fellow in California who was parting out a lathe. I had this shipped to my cousins in Kalamazoo where my Grandmother is. So I now have the overhead drive assembly with me in Ontario awaiting its turn in the restoration queue. Here is a picture of what I got. One big issue with this might be the alignment of the holes in the lathe body. That will be an interesting time when I try and fit it back together. Everything was well packed and survived the 1000km trip back home.

While I was there in Kalamazoo I received an email from a fellow in Ottawa that revived my faith in humanity. I believe when I started this blog I mentioned that I had bought this lathe from a fellow in Ottawa who had beat me to buying this lathe from another fellow in Ottawa. Well when the fellow I bought it from decided not to continue the restoration due to missing pieces and the complexity of the work I purchased the lathe from him. I then emailed the original owner in Ottawa to see if it was possible that he might still have the pieces. I originally heard nothing back. This occurred around February this year. Well while in Kalamazoo I received an email from the original owner stating he'd found some of the missing items and if I wanted them I could have them. These items included the gear case cover door, the half nuts, two stops for the stopping bar and some nuts and bolts. Not only that they were mine no charge. He also wondered if I would be interested in buying some NOS Hardinge collets and collet dead centre. I said sure and when can we meet. Most people would either have just thrown the stuff away or tried to sell them for as much as they could. I was really flabbergasted when this did not occur. My thanks to Clyde in Ottawa. Not only did he have these pieces but when I went through the nuts and bolts I found the half moon locking piece for the lead screw that was missing as well and that was completely unexpected. So now we have essentially all the critical items needed to get the lathe back to running condition. Here is a picture of the some of the items he had as well as the door after I cleaned and primed it. I've also included a picture of the machinery dealers tag that was on the cover. The Company was Hill, Clarke and Company Inc of Boston and New York. I've cleaned the tag as best I can and will reinstall once the painting is done. 

  

 Now the next thing that happened was Saturday when I was back in Ontario at my parents I saw an ad for Hardinge collets from a fellow in Toronto. He had 74 collets in excellent shape and supposedly had 64 in 1/64 increments. All this for 375$ I jumped all over that and picked them up on my way home. Unfortunately when we sorted them all out he was missing the ones from 1/64 to 7/64ths but had all the rest. So I now have a second almost complete set of collets for the #86 lathe. Here is a picture of the collets on the new tray along with the NOS collets(in the very centre) I bought from the fellow in Ottawa.

As well I picked up the casting's I had made for the tray supports from a company in Grimsby Ontario. Initial   viewing was good however after a real up close look and checking with squares I noticed that at least one casting is not usable and a second will be decided upon once the machining starts on it. It turns out that the pins I made to locate the two halves were not quite big enough and large enough so they allowed the pattern to move a little while they were tamping up the copes. Since I needed to have a few more castings poured based on interest in these castings, I've fixed the pattern and will have some more cast before shipping any out. Here's at least a picture of those castings I have already. The one on the right is the original one that I used when building the pattern.

I've also had the legs, the tray and the two cabinets sand blasted and given a coat of primer. While working on the lathe body I noticed some small items. This lathe was supposedly built with some care because they were not cheap lathes when sold. These were a specialised lathe probably not used in the ordinary machine shop. With this in mind you'd think they would ensure that there castings were top notch. While cleaning the lathe I noticed that the pocket on the right end where the leadscrew and driving rods are secured was not a smooth surface. There was not enough material at the bottom of the pocket to be machined out. You can see the rough cast iron surface that is left in the picture below. Likewise in the rounded out pocket behind the nested gears the same problem arose. And lastly they did not even bother to file off small pieces of cast iron that filled small voids in the pattern. In the third picture below you can see a small blob of cast iron that was on the rounded edge at the bottom of the lathe body before I filed it away. So I guess there were some quality control issues in the Hardinge Factory in 1917 as well.

I finally decided on a colour, at least for now, we still have not painted a section. The colour will be a Charcoal grey with a hammered finish. It's a Tremclad colour that looks like it will look pretty good. I know these are only spray bombs but the price is still cheaper than Automotive paint with the catalyst and the reducers. Maybe next week we'll have a piece painted up to see what it looks like.

Well I think that's all for now see you in the next episode.

Harold