Well welcome to the New Year. 2014 is now officially here and we are not enjoying the start of this New Year. Lousy weather all over the place. Bitterly cold weather here. Some people might say I have nothing to complain about considering their location and temperatures but -25deg C is really cold for our area. Now they're talking about another snowstorm tomorrow as well. Oh well at least I have a heater for the garage although I'm sure the hydro company loves it when I turn it on.
Anyway on to the continuing story. So I contacted my friend with the drill press however his chuck only goes to 1/2" as well. He suggested I could come buy and use the mill with collets as he has collets that will fit the 3/4" shank on the countersink. However by the time we had discussed this I had decided to buy a new chuck for my drill press that will accept 3/4" shanks. I should have this chuck by the middle of next week and then I will be able to drill the countersinks required in the mounting plate.
Now I know I said I didn't want to start on something fresh as I already have lots of parts laying around waiting to be reassembled. However I could not just sit around especially with all this free time around the holidays. So I decided it was time to take the section apart that held the 3 step pulley in the overhead drive assembly. This section takes the driving motion from the "transmission section" above and translates it down to the headstock by way of a 3 step pulley. The transmission has a high and low setting and using this with the 3 step pulley gives you 6 different speeds at the chuck face. Once  the entire lathe is assembled and the electric motor installed with appropriate pullies I will be able to chart the 6 speeds. Here is a picture of this section of the overhead drive. You can see the 3 step pulley as well as the two sprockets which accept the chain drive from the transmission shaft.

Just a little side trip here. The two sprockets above are for a "leaf chain" that comes from the transmission shaft above. These two chains each have a connecting link. However the one chain was missing the closing plate that completes the link. I cleaned up the link and found out the manufacturer was Whitney chain which was bought out by Renold in the mid 1940's. I emailed the company as well as a few other leaf chain manufacturing companies to see if I could obtain an appropriate connecting link plate. Below is the picture of the link I sent some companies as well as a picture of the leaf chain.

The picture of the link shows the details of the link with sizes. Although a .375" pitch chain is still made the pins on the links are now .140" in dia not the .100" dia pins that I had. So, so far nobody has been able to help me with finding a premade plate. So I decided to make one up myself. I took a piece of steel from a tie down strap that had broken and cut out enough to make the plate. First thing I did was carefully file it down to the thickness required. Then we carefully filed out the profile like the original link plate. Once we had something that was close I drilled out the two holes and made sure it fit on the connecting link as needed. Here are some pictures showing the different stages of work.

Once we proved it fit I heated the part up cherry red and quenched it in some water. Then we heated it again to a lower temperature and let it cool down naturally. It wasn't a precise heat treating job but based on what i've read and seen it should do the trick. The last picture above shows the two links, one with original plate attached and the other with the new made plate after heat treating lying beside it. So at least the chain will be secured properly. All that is left is to buy some really small cotter pins to pin the plate to the other half of the link.

I then went back to working on the previous piece. I disassembled the speed change lever and cleaned an painted this section as well as polished on part of the lever. Only thing left on the handle is to give the wooden end a few coats of Tung Oil. Here are some pictures of these pieces. Looks like the previous user of this drive painted this handle and another one read probably to make them a little easier to see.

Next was to take the parts that held the shaft with the 3 step pulley and the sprockets apart and clean all the pieces. Once they were all clean they were primed and painted. No real issues with any of this other than the mess when wire wheeling all the parts. There was a little paint left on the metal as well as a base coat of some material that basically came of as a black dust. Some form of metal filler is my guess. By the way the original paint looks like it was a "lime green" tint. Here are some pictures of the parts getting cleaned and painted.

A couple things that came up. In the first picture above you see there is a bolt missing, not sure what happened there as I'm not even sure how they bolted them in. Could not use a socket or a wrench. Could use screwdriver since there is a slot in the head of the bolt however it does not look like it would turn around without hitting the centre shaft section. I did not try and unbolt them to prove this however it is the only way I see they could have done this. Along with this one of the two bolts installed had a lower profile head to allow an Allen set screw to be used. This set screw had to be inserted prior to the bolt being inserted. You can insert an Allen key to tighten and loosen however you cannot take out the set screw. Another interesting thing was there were Allen set/cap screws used to secure the pulley and the sprocket to the the shafting. At first I thought they must be an after market repair as I thought Allen screws were not around when these lathes were built. However after doing some research I found out that accepted knowledge says the first manufactured Allen screws occurred around 1910 although some patents go back into the 1860's.
I started to put this assembly back together today, Saturday, however I wanted to freshen up a couple of the Allen set/cap screws. Unfortunately the local hardware stores did not have my sizes in stock so will have to wait till Monday when the local Fastenal store is open and we can pick them up there. As well I can also order the small cotter pins I will need.

So that's where we sit at this time. Hopefully by next week the new drill chuck arrive and I will have bored out the countersinks. Then we can really work at putting this entire overhead assembly back together. On a little side note for those who might be interested. I was talking to an individual in Chicago who was interested in my Van Norman #10 Dividing head. According to this fellow he used to own one of these Cataracts and sold it to another person in the area. I have asked him if he remembered the Serial number but he did not. However he did say he still is in contact with the person who purchased the machine so hopefully over the next few weeks he has a chance to talk to this fellow and I hope he contacts me to see if his is a new serial number or one we already have on the charts.

Well until next week have a great time enjoying this cold and white weather.

Harold