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Started making the lay shaft for my lathe today, yes the cone pully is made of wood. If it's bad form posting pics of wood on a metal working forum please accept my humblist apology. Big Grin It's a good hard wood likley Beech and each secition has been turned individually and will be bonded together with the grain a 90deg to each other.
The shaft is 25mm silver steel and a 203mm dia picador pulley.
Hopefully the pillow block bearings will arrive tomorrow and I'll start making the frame to mount the shaft on, I'm making it from IPE wood as a mock up first as I have some spare and it's harder than nails so will be plenty strong enough.
[attachment=14493]
Will be following along, i have seen wood do some amazing things. the old man that teached me to do machine work build a wood turning lath from wood even the head stock with pressed in bearings. alot of old time oil riggers would use wood for bearings just keep them greased. So wood mock ups would not be something i would fret about. i guess i better add that those wood bearings had leather around the shaft if i would use more wood mockups i would have less scrap lying around. man thats alot of woods or woulds.
You will have to ask Greg about posting pictures of items made of wood  Thumbsup
Has anyone any advise on the speeds I should be aiming for at the chuck?
I'm going to start out using a 1450 rpm motor possibily running a 2 1/2" or 3" pulley on to an 8" pulley on the layshaft. The cone pulley on both layshaft & lathe spindle are 3 1/2", 4 1/2" & 5 1/2".
The lathe also has a back gear but I don't know the reduction on that yet, will have to count gear teeth.
I think you may have posted this elsewhere but what bearings does the spindle have? The picture would suggest roller bearings and if you have replaced them, or if you know the specification, you should be able to find out their rating.
(05-25-2017, 09:01 AM)Mayhem Wrote: [ -> ]I think you may have posted this elsewhere but what bearings does the spindle have?  The picture would suggest roller bearings and if you have replaced them, or if you know the specification, you should be able to find out their rating.

The spindle has a taper roller bearing 1985 / 1920 on the tail end of the shaft and a tapered brass bearing on the chuck end both bearings have the minor dia towards the center of the shaft, it also has a thrust ball bearing race at the very tail end of the shaft that an adjuster sleeve bears on to.
I only replaced the taper roller bearing as the others appeared fine
Do you have a photo of the brass bearing?
[attachment=14507]
(05-26-2017, 06:04 AM)Mayhem Wrote: [ -> ]Do you have a photo of the brass bearing?

This is the best photo I have without taking the main spindle apart again, it's just below the spindle taper left hand side
Interesting. Certainly not what I would have expected to see. Especially if the other end has a roller bearing in it. I have no idea on how high you could/should spin that thing up.
(05-27-2017, 09:58 AM)Mayhem Wrote: [ -> ]Interesting.  Certainly not what I would have expected to see.  Especially if the other end has a roller bearing in it.  I have no idea on how high you could/should spin that thing up.

I think the max rpm with the motor I have and reductions from the layshaft gearing will be aprox 800 - 900rpm. I hope to have the lathe powered within the next week so we'll see how things go.
Nothing is surprising me on this lathe now.
I have doubts that the tapers in the head & tail stock are Morse Tapers and could be another less common type. Neither a 2 or 3mt will fit in the tailstock, looks like a 2mt may fit if I remove the tang but will see after I've drilled the through hole as the tang may just need clearence.

I got my first dial indicator the other day and checked the runout on the chuck and was very pleased to see 0.02mm on the chuck body but 0.4mm on a 12mm ground silver steel bar in the jaws, guess they'll need grinding!
Just seen a video by our John (Doubleboost) on grinding chuck jaws so at least I now have an idea how to proceed correcting that.