Hi No, I won't be painting it. It's a matter of personal preference, and mine is to leave the paint as-is because its condition includes information about the history of this lathe. I'd equate this to antique furniture which is worth more if it retains its original finish and age induced patina, tha...

Hi The lathe is now all assembled, positioned, levelled and ready for work. The aluminium splash guard (made by a previous owner) is fitted. It takes up very little real estate in my garage and workshop. The as delivered photos in my first post, and the finished photos below don't show any significa...

Hi To check that the spindle bearings were correctly setup, I ran the lathe at full speed for 30minutes, no load. I measured the bearing temperature every 5 minutes. To measure the bearing temperature, I used a digital thermometer which measures ambient temp at the display. A second sensor on the en...

Hi When I was doing final tightening up of the spindle bearing locknuts, I made a mistake and ended up with too much pre-load on the spindle bearings. A no-load high speed run confirmed that bearing operating temperatures were too high. I needed to loosen the locknuts (easy) and partly remove the be...

Hi The stuff on my finger just looked like dirty sediment. The oil may never have been changed before. I don't know what sealant was used on the cover. I used silicon gasket in a tube. All the paint inside and below the oil line is stripped off. There were fine metalic particles but nothing more tha...

Hi Next on the menu was the gearbox. The oil level sight glass showed golden coloured oil that looked clean. This was deceptive. There was a thick layer of black tar like sediment in the base of the gearbox. More gunk to clean out. Opening the gearbox is simply a matter of removing the selector leve...

Hi It was now time to fit the bearing and adjust backlash on the spindle. To install the bearing race on the gear end of the spindle, I simply used the lock nuts (left hand threads) to drive the bearing onto the shaft. I turned the spindle lock around the wrong way to allow it to effectively stop th...

Hello After spending several days soaking and flushing out the old grease from the spindle bearings, they were finally ready to go back in. Installation is the reverse of removal. If the headstock has been fully disassembled as I have done, it is easiest to start with installing the spindle and work...

Hi The shaft below the spindle holds the mating back gears and the belt drive. The shaft screws in. Remove by using a large bladed scewdriver. Note the dark sludge on the shaft that used to be grease. The shaft holds a compound gear. A single gear is held in place on the compound gear with a large c...

The spindle is shown here fully disassembled. Removing the spindle requires the removal of the end gear, lock nuts, inner race and sleeve. The back gears are a sliding fit on the shaft but the sleeve and bearing race are press fits. Removing the end gear and lock nuts is the very first step. You sho...

Hi [Edit: Do not use the method described in the first part of this post. Use the bolt/joiner nut method described further down. ] I used a 10mm threaded rod and a wooden frame to apply tension to the spindle. With enough tension, the inside bearing race of the left taper bearing moved along the spi...

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On another web site the photos show a threaded rod being used to drag out the spindle. I am going to try this before the hammer trick. Hopefully with all the grease and oil around that area, there shouldn't be any spindle locking corrosion.

Hi I've worked my way towards the heart of the lathe. I have removed the bearing covers, gear train and spindle bearing lock nuts. The grease has definitely deteriorated. It's dark and gungy looking. The oil is separating from the soap. It's definitely in need of replacement. There is no way I can p...

The next stage was to strip and clean the top slide. No tricky bits here except the screw assembly. I couldn't remove the pin that holds the handle on. The action seemed to be smooth so I left it. Along with a number of useful genuine Denford accessories, the lathe came with the slotted Tee boring t...

Stripping down was fairly straight forward. I just started at one end and laid everything out in the order of removal. The only tricky part was figuring out that one hole had four set screws to hold two shafts. The lead screw handle disengaging bar is held between the apron and the bed and slides wh...

Hello I stripped, cleaned and reassembled the apron. Despite the gunk, mechanically the apron and saddle is in good shape. No obvious signs of wear and tear. The interlock pin prevents the lead screw and feedshaft being engaged at the same time. The lead screw adjustment pin needs to be set in the c...

Hello To repair the damage to the lathe bedway, I glued wet/dry strips onto wood. The strip width and location matched the damaged area so I wouldn't take metal off good parts of the bed. The chrome bed is very hard and only a small amount of metal was removed. Bearing blue showed a good fit to the ...

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I have also used a PSU to make a hot-wire cutter. Standard PSUs have a 3V, 7Amp output. If that is applied to taunt resistance wire, the hot wire can be used to cut polystyrene foam without any mess.

First thing to look at was the electrics. It looks like the transformer has been replaced and some of the wiring wasn't up to standards. An electric coolant pump (automotive water heater pump) was fitted by the previous owner who powered it with a battery. I still have the original belt driven pump....

Hello I am now the proud owner of a Denford Viceroy lathe. I was able to trace the history of this particular lathe. It was purchased by the first owner in about 1979 and imported to New Zealand. That was at a time when obtaining foreign currency required a special import license. Those were the day...