Craftsman Lathe Cleanup

I have a good friend at work who has made more than a few trips to pick up things from CraigsList for me. Lot of good rusty sh*t in South Jersey. Anyway, he's a big surf fisher and wants to turn his own lures. I told him I would keep an eye out for a decent lathe for him. I showed him a few over the course a few months but he never looked into them. He doesn't like to spend money on himself so I quickly figured out he wasn't going to buy one himself. So I told SWMBO I was thinking of picking up one for him if I can find it cheap. She pointed out that he has picked up a bunch of rusty sh*t for me and doubled the budget. So after a little looking this is what came home:

As it came home:





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It was dirty and a little rusty but the motor worked and the bearings sounded good. This is my first machine refresh so it was a steep learning curve. My first stop was OWWM.com for the instructions/parts list. It was missing the tool rest so I picked one up off of eBay.


Torn down:


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Sandblasted:


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Primed the big parts:


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Painted and mostly assembled:


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I was a little sneaky here. I showed him the Rustoleum hammered colors and asked him what color I should paint my Craftsman drill press. This was the color he picked. It dosen't show in the pics but it is a light blue color.

I wire wheeled all of the bolts and aluminum parts. I painted the aluminum bits silver and left the bolts as is.

During reassembly I screwed up one of the bearings and had to buy a new one.


The motor was kind of a mess. This was the hardest part for me since I had no idea how to take it apart. Thanks to some help from GJ member Steevo I changed the plug to a 3-prong. A little wire wheel and some paint and it looks respectable.

Before:


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After:


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I still have a few things left to do; clean up the aluminum cover, bolt everything down to a piece of plywood, and a quick test run.

It’s not perfect, but I think it will do what he wants to do. Going to spend some time finishing it up this weekend.

Thanks for looking!

Wish you lived closer. I have a Craftsman metal lathe in the corner that needs some TLC.

Bib Overalls said:

Wish you lived closer. I have a Craftsman metal lathe in the corner that needs some TLC.

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Let's see some pics!

WOW! Awesome restore job!

Very nice work!
Let's hope it gets put to work turning out lures.

Nicely done only thing I would have done differant would be to paint the motor to match .


Rick

Cool lathe

Good job on the lathe, even nicer of you to pay your friend back with it! Very cool!

two thumbs up...especially since it's for someone else. Not enough of that these days.

on the Rustoleum hammered paint....I sure have good luck with this stuff provided I use the old school paint can (top push button).

Nice Job! Those older tools are really cool, I am sure that will mean alot to him. You should see if the first lure he turns can be for you!

Thanks guys. This has been a fun project. Even more so since it was for a friend.

Rick – I ran out of the hammered paint and couldn’t source it locally. It pretty expensive online so I went with what I had. It probably would look better matched though. Next time.

Oh honestly the paint matching isnt a biggy honestly it may not have matched originally . Most of the lathes and drill presses of that time period ( from Sears ) came without a motor and you got the motor seperate . Sometimes they matched and sometimes they didnt .


Rick

Looking good! You'd never know that this was your 1st equipment resto.

Darn fine job WhoWhatNow, and a wonderful gesture for your friend. Home Depot stocks the Rustoleum colors. Your friend also will want to join the Yahoo group for these lathes (Atlas-Craftsman) group - there is a lot of good info there.

Nelson

This is a great thing you are doing for your friend, good on ya!

Nice work on the lathe also...

So I finally got a chance to finish the lathe up tonight. I installed the aluminum cover on the head stock and mounted the lathe on a piece of plywood that I had painted black. I cut some slots into two pieces of flat stock and mounted the motor to those and then to the plywood. This way he can adjust the belt tension relatively easily. I also printed the instruction manual from OWWM.org for him. A quick test and into the trunk it went. I’m going to give it to him tomorrow.




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I enjoyed reading about the story of this lathe. I purchased one of these from my brother about four decades ago and it has been the best wood lathe I've ever had, even considering I now own a total of four different sized wood lathes. I envy that you have the lathe bed extension, a very rare item. If taken care of these lathes will last forever and was one of Sears' better tools from the 1950's.

nice job restoring the lathe. I recently brought all my wood machines in from storage and had to remove all the rust.

Have your buddy check out basement baits. http://muskie.outdoorsfirst.com/board/forums/forum-view.asp?fid=25

The guys there make all there own baits. Anything from turning wood to pouring epoxy or stamping metal.