Well as mentioned last week I did not expect to get to much done this week due to work and weather. Don't feel like doing much after you work all day in a mediocre air conditioned office and the humidity is such that you can wash your dishes with the water you wring out of your shirt.
However even with all that I did manage to get  a few things done. You have to remember this is not a race and there is no prize for the first one done. So over the week and mostly on Saturday I got the following items finished. One I painted the trays for the #39 lathe Forest green just like the rest of the lathe. Then I finished attaching the sellers logo to the #86 lathe with small brass screws. Initially I tried to find brass rivets for this however finding such an item where I live is nigh to impossible. I managed to find some nice brass screws for the threading plate locally however could not find small screws for the dealers plate. While I was home this weekend went out to Kala's Hardware on the west side of St Catharines. This Hardware store has always been known as the place to go if you can't find what your're looking for elsewhere. They always seem to have some of the out of the way or oddball sized items. Sure enough found some small brass screws to secure the dealers logo back to the machine. As well I also finished the dollies that will be used to move the lathe around once the legs and body are mated back together. Here are a couple of pictures of the dollies and the gear cover with the dealers logo.

After this work was done decided to finish machining the bolt required for the collet tray. A couple of weeks ago I thought I had made this bolt but then realized I had made it from 5/8" hex rod when it was supposed to be made from 3/4" hex rod. So bought some 3/4" hex rod and this weekend made the bolt on the #39 lathe. Now I am not a professional  machinist so here's the blow by blow on how this went. First cut the bar down to usable size to make the bolt. Turned down the hex bar to .487 which was the finished dimension of the original bolt in the #39 lathe. Used the auto feed on the old lathe and it worked very well. Here's a picture of the part as it is being turned down to the required dimension. As you can see I am using a tangential bit which at this time I find very easy to use.

Once that was done needed to setup the threading apparatus to turn a 12 TPI thread. First some head scratching. I thought I had the lathe all setup to work on this however the feed and lead screws were not turning. Spent 5 minutes trying to figure this out when I finally realized I had the QC in bypass mode not in 12 TPI mode. Once that was sorted out I did a dry run with the threading bar I have from Arthur Warner company. Again thought I had it all setup unfortunately the bit was loose in the mount and crashed on the first run. Crashed badly that it broke the small screw that holds the bit in place. Luckily enough I had bought a threading adaptor for the Aloris toolpost so installed that instead. This is normally used for coarser threads looking at the size however 12 TPI is definitely coarse enough for this bit. Here's were a little planning should have come into play. I should have left the centre post loose from the collet tray so that I could have used this to check the threads when I was almost finished. As such I now had to carefully remove the bolt try it in the centre post and then carefully reinstall in the lathe and line up the threads so that I could remove the last little bit. As it was I needed to remove another 5thous to get it to fit properly.  Once it was all done I rounded the head like all the other bolts and then polished the head. Here are  a few pictures of the finished bolt and when the thread was completed. Good thing nobody pays me to do this as I estimate it took me close to 2hours just to do this one bolt with all the issues I had. Oh well I can only get better.

Well I'm finished work for this week on Monday and then I have 4 days to work in the shop on various items. I hope to make and finish the draw bar for the Van Norman Mill and I hope to also get some more work done on the lathe bed of the #86. I plan to carefully go over the top bedways and see about working on cleaning them up. If we're real lucky we might have the bed, cabinets, legs and tray all mated together by next time I write in the blog. Well all the best and enjoy the summer. Remember be careful out there in relation to sunburns.

Harold