Good afternoon again. I hope you're all having some very nice weather. Our temperature is starting to climb again, and reached 28C today, with some humidity. Next week it's supposed to get warmer still. Those might be the days I wish I had an air conditioned shop. Oh well all this sunshine is great for my solar panels the more sunshine the more money. :=):=)
Anyway it wasn't a good week and it wasn't a bad week. Went back to work on Monday and therefore worked all week and did not have a lot of time to spend in the shop. However I did manage a little machining in the evening, however not to much, probably spent more time talking with the neighbours and watching the kids run around the yard. One reason I was in no rush to do a lot of milling was that I have purchased some resharpened shell mills. They should arrive this week and a few of them have radiused corners. The upper shelf arm can accept a rounded corner so I'm going to wait till the shell mills get here before finishing the milling operation on the upper arm. Here's a picture though of the setup with a few runs through with the shell mill I already have. The setup may look tipsy but it's holding the bracket relatively solid so far. Eventually I'll need to pick up better blocking to secure items however it's all I have for now. Actually along with this I'm still looking for a Van Norman Vice to go along with this mill so if anybody has a line on one please let me know.

On Saturday morning after going into work for a few minutes first, I did a little cleanup of the garage, and then decided it was time to get #86 back on her legs. Previously this week I had bolted the two cabinets back onto the lathe body. Then today I rotated it onto a set of sawhorses and with the neighbours help placed the lathe body onto the tray. Once that was done I carefully extended the whole affair over the end of the temporary table and bolted the left hand legs to the bottom. As well prior to this I had made up the two convex washers I needed for the ride hand side legs. So after the left side was secure slide the lathe completely off the temporary table and onto a support so that I could bolt the right hand leg onto the lathe. The left side has 4 bolts and secures the leg to the lathe solidly. The right side has two bolts and has a convex washer between the tray and the top of the leg. These two bolts are longer and have a .500"spring on the bottom of the bolt before the nut. Once these bolts are snug it still allows the lathe to flex a little which will happen with changes in temperature. Here is a picture of the lathe sitting on a pair of homemade dollies.

Look pretty good if I say so myself. The red lettering actually looks real good on the charcoal grey that I'm painting the lathe with. I also hung the collet tray underneath as well. This has a set of collets that is complete with the exception of 7 from 1/64 to 7/64ths. Eventually I'll find these as well and fill out the collection. 

I plan to finish the tray bracket this week, once the cutters arrive, and fit it onto the #39. I'll also look at 

attaching the tray bracket to this lathe the #86 as well since I have that one already. After that is done we'll start work on all the gearing that goes onto the left side of the lathe. 

On a further side note it looks like we've found an individual who may have upto 4 more of these lathes in his collection. I plan on talking with him again this weekend and hopefully somewhere down the road I can confirm this story and provide pictures of the new additions to our list of Hardinge Cataract QC's. Along that line if you know of anybody who might have one of these lathes please talk to him and see if he's been in contact with me. If not please direct him to this site and ask him to leave a comment so that I can contact him if they would be interested in talking to me.  We'd really like to know where as many of these lathes are. At this time I have a database of at least 30 lathes with the possibility of 4 more as discussed. As well I'm in contact with 14 people who own these lathes however there are still owners out there who I don't have contact with and would love to hear from.

Until next week have fun out there and please be safe.

Harold