140mower
Don
........as the shirt tails disappear into the leadscrew, a nice big target might not seem so out of place....
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Southbend lathe, $3400, Calgary, AB
- Thread starter JustaDB
- Start date
Blue Wall
Active Member
The low down on this lathe is that it came out of SAIT. The owner bought it from there. It had just had a new motor, reverser switch and the emergency shut off. It comes with the stuff shown in the attached photos. My question is should it have another set of gears or does it come complete?
140mower
Don
Any other gears would be special order at the time of purchase, and that is basically the transposing gears. If you open the end cover there should be one extra gear just hanging out in space, that's the gear specified in the threading chart for the coarsest threads. If you see a metric chart inside the cover, then that lathe likely left the factory with transposing gears and are mia if not in the cabinet.
Let's look at this a different way.
The SB13 is a great beginners lathe. WAY BETTER than the 1800s lathe I learned on. WAY BETTER.
Even if it did have the gears once upon a time, and doesn't now, it is still a great beginners lathe.
You won't know what it has or doesn't have till you go look at it. Ya gotta go look with cash in hand. Once you lay an eyeball on it, see what it has and doesn't have, you should have an idea of what you will pay. So make an offer and tell him why.
But bottom line is that you don't NEED metric and you don't even need any other gears. That thing has a very nice change gear box just the way it sits.
So ask yourself this question:
Are you looking for an excuse not to go look at it or are you looking for something more expensive that's a bit further up the food chain than a beginner lathe? Cuz, with or without gears, and assuming it's not broken, that's a very nice beginner lathe.
You won't know what it should have till you go get a look at it.
If you can get a Serial Number, I "THINK" you can look it up.
The worry around gears comes from lathes without quick change gear boxes. For such lathes you need a stack of gears that you change to cut different threads. Not neccessary for lathes with a QC box, and while I don't intimately know this lathe, the few extra gears (if any) with a lathe are usually for doing weird and wonderful threads. Mostly you forget they are there and use the QCGB
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Yep. If the lathe suits you and doesn't take food off the family table, it'd be a pretty darn solid start, and with the name, it will retain value, too. A bit bigger than most guys start with, but still a manageable size, with some minor equipment. A basic engine hoist, and, say, a hydraulic pallet dolly. (you might as well get one now, you're on that path anyway! LOL!
Aside from that, there is a HUGE amount of knowledge and support out there for pretty much any old school South Bend equipment, and a thriving aftermarket in used and new parts, so if you figure you really need something later, like Metric Transposing gears, you should have no troubles finding those. 'Accurate' transposing gear sets use a 127:100 ratio conversion gear pair in them, but a lot of the machines used a 63 tooth gear, and were able to get close enough that nobody but NASA or NIST could tell. 127:100, is the lowest factors of the 25.4mm to 1 inch conversion, while 63, is 'almost' half that again. The differences in actual pitch created, are usually so far in to the decimal places as to not be material.
If you don't have forward/reverse capability on the switch gear, Metric on an Inch machine is a minor PITA, and you may find that other ways make more practical sense, unless it's something that really needs the accuracy.
FWIW, without switch-able reversing, you end up having to either hand turn the chuck, or install a hand crank on the spindle to return to the thread start, as you cannot disengage the half nuts between passes, so you either run the tool back to it's starting position under power in reverse, or by hand turning the spindle.
***(technically, not true, but it is worth reading up on, if you feel the need for a migraine! It's kinda hard to wrap yer head around!)