Well the roller coaster ride continues. Dad was sent home last week Sunday and by Friday was back in the Hospital. Still not sure as to how much time he has left. Went home last week Saturday and spent 4 days at home to be with them. Came back home on Tuesday to go back to work since in reality there was nothing I could do there. Unless something drastically happens in the next few days will stay at home till this coming Saturday when I start 10 days vacation and will go home to help out as much as possible.

While I was home this week I managed to do a few small items. First the Taper attachment as mentioned is all cleaned up and ready to go. Here is a picture of it laying on the bench awaiting install.

Now lets get on to the new stuff we did this week. On top of the gear housing are three gears that translate the power from the headstock to the gearing section. The first gear sits on a shaft where it can move in and out 5/8" so that it can either engage the rest of the gears or not. The picture below shows this gear assembly.

The screw head you see has a hole through the centre that allows a pin with rounded ends and spring assembly to ride inside the shaft of the gear housing. There are two grooves inside this shaft to catch the rounded ends and essentially behave as parking slots to hold the gear in that location. The two locations are either engaging the rest of the gears to the bottom left or not engaging the gears. When this was taken apart earlier it was noticed that the pin had lost one rounded end. I therefore had to make two pins such that one slides inside the other and the original spring was reused to force these two pieces apart when they were in the shaft of the screw. The original piece was some how secured such that you could remove the pin and it stayed in one piece. Mine is a little simpler and when you remove it you need to be careful since the parts can come apart. Here are a couple of pictures one showing the gear, original pin, and screw head. The second showing a closeup of the original pin and you can see the one end is not rounded anymore. The third picture shows the two new parts, minus the spring, that slide inside one another. The picture above this paragraph actually shows the pieces back on the lathe, and working as it should. Turning these two items was interesting in that they are quite small.

Next I decided to start working on the locking collar that sits on the extension to the leadscrew under the gearing section. Here is that same collar on the #39 lathe that I will need to duplicate.

This collar is approx 2" in dia by approx .650" thick. I had no 2 inch stock in the garage so had to turn down a piece of three inch to the required diameter. Once that was done I drilled out as much as I could with drill bits on hand and then parted off the piece to the correct thickness. Once the part was removed I placed it back in the lathe and proceeded to bore out the hole until the appropriate size was acquired to allow me to thread it for the 1" by 26tpi thread that is on the shaft.  I finished that all, and was going to go to the mill to start boring out the holes for the retaining screws when I realized I have not yet bought a vise for the Van Norman milling machine. I've been actively trolling Ebay and other sites hoping to get an actual Van Norman vise to go with the machine but so far no luck. I guess this weekend when I drive home will stop by KBC tools and pick one up. I leave you with two pictures of this part. One while still in the lathe and being turned down to correct diameter and the second when it was done and awaiting milling.

I also took the time to install the change gear bracket which we had cleaned up last week and started painting. Here is a picture of it back in place.

Last thing I did this week was machine a shoulder bolt and nuts for attaching the forward/reverse pivot arm to it's retaining bracket below the gear housing. This was a fairly routine piece as long as you measured twice to ensure you had the right length for the shoulders otherwise you might compress the bracket and prevent the lever from working smoothly. Here are two pictures one showing the bolt and nuts after machining, and to be reasonably authentic they are 5/16" by 26tpi which was common on this lathe. Second picture shows the bolt installed and working as it should.

Well tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in Canada and it's a holiday for us Canucks. My guess is that I will most likely spend a little bit of time in the shop working on the Tailstock for the remainder of the week. I hope those Canucks reading this enjoy your Thanksgiving Turkey and for all you Americans it's just around the corner for you. As for the rest of the world you can have turkey whenever you want. It's good all year round. All the best and enjoy the fall weather. It's been great up here so far.

Harold