Well after a few weeks of doing nothing we are back at work. I did not do any restoration on the lathe itself I just worked on items that needed to be done to eventually push things forward on the lathe. For instance I finished off the welding cart I was building. I rounded some flat stock and welded it to the bottom of the dolly I used so that the bottles are secured in the cart. I welded up some hooks for the chain that also helps secure the bottles. I then welded up some 3/8" rod on the back of the dolly to hang the hoses from. I then cut out from sheet stock an accessories tray that was welded in between the dolly vertical bars under the handle. Here are some pictures showing all this work. These first two show the flat bar rounded up and then welded to the bottom of the dolly

These next few show the sheet stock that was cut to shape and then using a piece of old angle iron and the edge of the welding table bent over such that when finished I had a rounded over lip. This gave me a stronger edge and a smooth edge such that I would not cut myself on it.

 The following pictures show the cart with the hose hanger welded on as well as it painted, and then with the tanks installed.

 Once this was done I went to work on my dividing head for the Van Norman mill. I will need this dividing head up and working to be able to fix and then cut new change gears for the lathe. When I bought this dividing head it did not come with a collet draw bar. I managed to find one on Ebay that I thought would work. I bought it and finally picked it up from the sister last week while at my Mom's place. When I brought it home and tried it out it was 1" to long on the shaft. I emailed a fellow who also had this style of dividing head and he advised me that his draw bar was just as long as the one I had and it worked fine. After doing some research on the Vintage Metalworking website I came to the conclusion that Van Norman made an early and a later version of the #7 1/2 Dividing head that I have. The earlier version is about 1" shorter than the later version and has a few other differences as well. There was enough thread in the tube that I could cut approx 1/2" off the end. I then had to make a large spacer bushing to fit over the tube to be able to accommodate the other 1/2" that I needed to compensate for. Because I could not remove the entire 1" from the tube I also had to make a smaller bushing that slid on the tube and centred the tube in the dividing head mechanism. So first I made the smaller bushing out of an old bronze bushing I got with one of my projects. Here are a couple of pictures of machining the bushing and then with it sitting on the tube. I had to heat the bushing up to expand it slightly for it to go on the tube. This worked out great because now I know that it is securely in place.

Here are a few pictures of the larger bushing. This bushing once inserted was silver soldered in place as it was just a little too big to be a force fit. The last picture shows the drawbar in the dividing head holding a collet at the other end as it should.

Once this was done I went back to working on the mandrel I talked about prior that will be used to hold the changes gears on the dividing head so they can have their teeth cut and or repaired. In order to lock the gears in place I needed to cut a 1/8" keyway to match the keyway on the gears. I initially planned on buying a woodruff key cutter to do this, however the local store did not have any. They did however have 1/8" HSS spiral cutters. So I picked up two thinking that at this size there was a good chance I would break one before I was finished cutting the slot. So over to the Van Norman Mill set up the mandrel in the vice and then very carefully with the mill at it's highest speed cut out the groove. Recommended speed should have been around 1000rpm for this cutter but the max the mill will go is approx 390rpm. With all this in mind I took it slow and easy and only took .005" depth of cuts per pass. I needed to do 14 passes to get the slot down to the correct depth. Well 14 passes later it was done and I did not break the cutting bit. Here are a couple of pictures showing it in the mill and then with a gear on it trying it out. I then cut the keyway shaft to length rounded the edges and attempted to silver solder this one in place also, but it was dismal failure. Once cool I will clean it all up and work on a different method of securing the keyway in the mandrel.

The next thing I worked on was making some locating tabs for the bottom of the Dividing head and the tailstock. This is just 4 pieces of 1/2"wide steel that I cut down to 3/8" thick that are now cut down and edges filed so they will fit in the grooves on the bottom of the dividing head and the tailstock. This will then lock them in place on the milling machine table and prevent them from moving along with the lock down bolts. As well it aligns them in line with the "x" axis of the milling machine and therefore setup is easier when you need to used these pieces of equipment. Here are a few pictures showing what I mean.

I still need to drill them out and countersink them for some 1/4" bolts to secure these tabs to the Dividing head and tailstock.

Lastly I tried a brazing repair job on a scrap gear I had. Since I now have a #2 and a #4 brazing tip I can work on thicker metal gears and see how it works. Well I need more practice it seems. I did not get a good bond between the braze and the Cast Iron. Hopefully this week we will have some warm weather such that I can open the garage door and practice with the Oxy-Acetylene system.

Well that's all for this week. I hope to have much more news next week as I now have all the time in the world to work on this project. Until my house sells I plan to do as much as possible since once the house sells I will start packing things up and moving them to my new location.

See you again
Harold