1953 Colchester Student Mk1 6" gap bed - A restoration project

[mygoggie]

I finally had some time to work on the lathe again!

The electrical enclosure and switch panel had to be sprayed and since I was spraying some Pajero parts, I added these to the parts to be coated.

The front panel as I left it a while ago. Cleaned with some lacquer thinners and ready for the lettering to be etched primed.





Etch primer and a later layer of 2K black sprayed on. I am not happy as the areas I cleaned before is now glossy whilst the greater area has the rough finish I sprayed on earlier.






I will have to sort this out somehow.

The little box thingamajig with the new final 2K black coating looking quite swanky. It just needs a tie and a companion in a red dress!







The back cover of the electrical panel also ready to go to the formal party in its new coat.







Next step was to spray some matt 2K clear coat on the electrical switch panel.





Before I did this, I tried my luck to get rid of the smooth areas by roughing the smooth glossy areas with some tacky 2K black paint and an earbud.








I left this to dry overnight and this morning sprayed the matt clear coat. A lot better but still some glossy spots ...







Whilst spraying some Pajero parts I over sprayed the glossy areas with the etching primer again to get the same rough finish. Lots of air and minimal paint settings on the gun is the way to do it.

It looks much better now and I think I can put the final layer of black on tomorrow. I will simply roughen the glossy parts now with a foam sanding pad to break the gloss before applying the final black layer.

The photo actually gives a false image as the glossy sections are in fact the matt areas and vice versa. Wonder why it came out like this? Anyway ...






Have a good week!

[mygoggie]

Brain is super excited!

He says he can do angular and radian mathematics again!

I think he is referring to the horisontal and vertical rotary table and also the diving head that landed in my lap this morning.





I will tackle these when the Pajero is running and lathe is painted. So, stop stressing please!

[John Lindsay]

I have just finished with my own 2 1/2 year lathe rebuild project - much smaller than the Colchester but still a s##t load of work and cost. It's up in the classifieds if anyone is interested - I am listing it on the forum before I put it onto Gumtree etc.

[NewLandy]

Beautiful piece of equipment! Worth every penny.

Problem is one needs to be skilled at using it, which I'm unfortunately not.....

[John Lindsay]

It comes with a manual, but yes, the skill to use it well comes with a lot of practice.

[plunger]

I have just finished with my own 2 1/2 year lathe rebuild project - much smaller than the Colchester but still a s##t load of work and cost. It's up in the classifieds if anyone is interested - I am listing it on the forum before I put it onto Gumtree etc.

You often see lathes painted and for sale . I hate seeing those kind of adds. I would prefer buying a lathe that is dirty and the tray is full of swarf. At least you know it works . I prefer an honest dent and scratch here and there.

A big red flag is when you see a beautifully painted lathe and all the overspray is on the concrete floor surrounding the lathe. It does nothing to the lathe in terms of performance.

These days I don't even bother painting any second hand machines I get.

This little Boxford lathe I can see has had a lot of love put into it. In a way its sad because its more a labour of love . I suspect this lathe has been put together by a perfectionist who actually enjoys the journey.

Its hard to recoup your labours worth unless you were lucky and not much has to be done on it and you got it cheap.

What many people don't realize is the Chinese machines of this size that you buy are real crap with low quality material and a poor fit. You can put alot of time into them scraping them and improve them a lot but if the cast iron is low grade there is only so much you can do.

I got taken on my first machine but my second machine I bought looked real bad . The paint was peeling off and it was real dirty. But I knew I was not making a mistake because when it was lifted onto the flatbed the owner burst out crying.

Yes machines do have souls and you can get very attached to them. My machine has found a good loving home and I hope this machine also finds a good home.

Mygoggie has a similar philosophy when it comes to lathes. He also doesnt believe in painting them.

[mygoggie]

He also doesnt believe in painting them.

Man, you have no idea how frustrating it is not being able to get my hands onto the lathe and painting it.

[mygoggie]

I have just finished with my own 2 1/2 year lathe rebuild project - much smaller than the Colchester but still a s##t load of work and cost. It's up in the classifieds if anyone is interested - I am listing it on the forum before I put it onto Gumtree etc.

A looooooooot of work went into this lathe @John. Well done! Sad to see you selling it as I believe it becomes part of your being as you resurrected an old tired machine into something new and looking ready for many moons of work! I trust it will go to a good home!

I know of a guy on the one FB group looking for a lathe. I will direct him to your add! I have mentioned your advertisement in the FB group.

[John Lindsay]

Thanks for the kind comments. Back in Sept 2016 I bought my Boxford from a dealer. Quite beaten up and painted a vile green with a white tailstock, badly done with a brush. I far prefer a machine tool in original paint with honest wear and tear than a quick and badly done tart-up to try and make it look better and worth more. But good bones on a nice Colchester Student base. Haggled hard and got it for a decent price. So I tore it down to nuts and bolts, stripped everything to bare metal and rebuilt it. I still had some parts with more wear than I would have liked. In March 2018 I was told of two scrap Boxfords being sold. Most of a Model A and headstock, gearbox and bed from an AUD. I bought them hoping to recover parts for my lathe - the AUD head was in really good condition. Realised after stripping that model A and model AUD head parts are not interchangeable.

But there was quite a lot of the model A and the bed, saddle apron and cross slide etc were in really good condition with hardly any wear showing. So it hadn't worked hard, but it had broken and missing gears, so I figure it got scrapped after someone tried to change gears on the fly and broke it. I also hate it when a repairable machine tool gets a few parts stripped off and is then scarpped - that just feels wrong. So there was just enough there to pull me into trying a rebuild on the model A. I had hoped that one of my two sons in law would be interested enough to take it and learn how to use it.

You can't do something like this if you are not passionate about it, forget doing it commercially because you know you are never going to recover all your time, and you are not going to do a proper job if you are not going to be a perfectionist. A coat of paint is simply not going to do it. Biggest challenge was all the missing parts. Plunger, you are quite right about this. But the challenge can be so much fun and so rewarding! I had the great advantage of having an identical lathe I could strip, measure and reverse engineer - would have been waaaay more difficult without this.

So you break it down into a series of mini projects.
Replace the broken teeth in the back gears - luckily only two. Gash out the broken teeth, braze in the correct grade of cast irron, recut to match. Replace the stripped main spindle gear - fiddly job but end result is undetectable and 100% functional. Build one good gearbox out of the 2 broken ones - luckily enough good parts left to do this. Make a tumbler lever from scratch and cut new gears. Replace all the missing gear train with new metric 1.5 module gears. Make a new half nut cam and lever. Buy a suitable second hand tailstock casting from some other lathe, machine and adapt, make spacers, levers, cams, spindle etc until you have an accurate working tailstock. Build new fixed and travelling steadies from scratch - laser cut plate welded together instead of the original castings. Make up missing pullies. And so on, etc, etc, etc. Then strip all the castings and other components down to bare metal, fill sand, paint with the correct Boxford Smoke Grey, refill, repaint, repeat (Mygoggie I think you can relate here, you are also doing a proper job, major respect), redo, redo until happy etc. Then assemble, test run, strip redo, adjust until everything is working as it should work, as it worked when it came out of the factory. Finally, run some heavy jobs to make sure that everything is 100% - and then partially strip and do a final repaint and re-asembly.

It has been quite challenging and has taken a lot of time as it has been done in bits and bobs as I got some free time, but it has been hugely enjoyable and extremely satisfying. Bit disappointed that SIL's are not interested, but I do not need two of the same lathe and I have the huge satisfaction that it will be going to a second life instead of the scrapheap.

So thanks for all the kind comments and encouragement. I am happy and confident that whoever buys this lathe will be getting a very good lathe

[mygoggie]

Thanks for the kind comments. Back in Sept 2016 I bought my Boxford from a dealer. Quite beaten up and painted a vile green with a white tailstock, badly done with a brush. I far prefer a machine tool in original paint with honest wear and tear than a quick and badly done tart-up to try and make it look better and worth more. But good bones on a nice Colchester Student base. Haggled hard and got it for a decent price. So I tore it down to nuts and bolts, stripped everything to bare metal and rebuilt it. I still had some parts with more wear than I would have liked. In March 2018 I was told of two scrap Boxfords being sold. Most of a Model A and headstock, gearbox and bed from an AUD. I bought them hoping to recover parts for my lathe - the AUD head was in really good condition. Realised after stripping that model A and model AUD head parts are not interchangeable.

But there was quite a lot of the model A and the bed, saddle apron and cross slide etc were in really good condition with hardly any wear showing. So it hadn't worked hard, but it had broken and missing gears, so I figure it got scrapped after someone tried to change gears on the fly and broke it. I also hate it when a repairable machine tool gets a few parts stripped off and is then scarpped - that just feels wrong. So there was just enough there to pull me into trying a rebuild on the model A. I had hoped that one of my two sons in law would be interested enough to take it and learn how to use it.

You can't do something like this if you are not passionate about it, forget doing it commercially because you know you are never going to recover all your time, and you are not going to do a proper job if you are not going to be a perfectionist. A coat of paint is simply not going to do it. Biggest challenge was all the missing parts. Plunger, you are quite right about this. But the challenge can be so much fun and so rewarding! I had the great advantage of having an identical lathe I could strip, measure and reverse engineer - would have been waaaay more difficult without this.

So you break it down into a series of mini projects.
Replace the broken teeth in the back gears - luckily only two. Gash out the broken teeth, braze in the correct grade of cast irron, recut to match. Replace the stripped main spindle gear - fiddly job but end result is undetectable and 100% functional. Build one good gearbox out of the 2 broken ones - luckily enough good parts left to do this. Make a tumbler lever from scratch and cut new gears. Replace all the missing gear train with new metric 1.5 module gears. Make a new half nut cam and lever. Buy a suitable second hand tailstock casting from some other lathe, machine and adapt, make spacers, levers, cams, spindle etc until you have an accurate working tailstock. Build new fixed and travelling steadies from scratch - laser cut plate welded together instead of the original castings. Make up missing pullies. And so on, etc, etc, etc. Then strip all the castings and other components down to bare metal, fill sand, paint with the correct Boxford Smoke Grey, refill, repaint, repeat (Mygoggie I think you can relate here, you are also doing a proper job, major respect), redo, redo until happy etc. Then assemble, test run, strip redo, adjust until everything is working as it should work, as it worked when it came out of the factory. Finally, run some heavy jobs to make sure that everything is 100% - and then partially strip and do a final repaint and re-asembly.

It has been quite challenging and has taken a lot of time as it has been done in bits and bobs as I got some free time, but it has been hugely enjoyable and extremely satisfying. Bit disappointed that SIL's are not interested, but I do not need two of the same lathe and I have the huge satisfaction that it will be going to a second life instead of the scrapheap.

So thanks for all the kind comments and encouragement. I am happy and confident that whoever buys this lathe will be getting a very good lathe

And now Brain chirps in from the side and quotes a wise lady: "Sciens a unique via et magna sumus invicem. Nostrum peculiari lumine suo iure et nostra nostrorum valebat, nec inveniunt."

[mygoggie]

Anyone here that can help me out with a 3D CAD drawing in G-Code of this bush? I have all the dimensions and done the flat layout in 2D CAD.

[ghouwens]

Anyone here that can help me out with a 3D CAD drawing in G-Code of this bush? I have all the dimensions and done the flat layout in 2D CAD.

Surely you mean 2D PAD, not CAD?

[mygoggie]

Surely you mean 2D PAD, not CAD?

Enlighten me?

I draw the layout in 2D on CAD to get the correct measurements of my tracing and am really not clued up to do a 3D drawing using these measurements for CNC purposes.

[ghouwens]

Enlighten me?

I draw the layout in 2D on CAD to get the correct measurements of my tracing and am really not clued up to do a 3D drawing using these measurements for CNC purposes.

PAD as in Paper Aided Design! If you had used cardboard it would have been CAD.

[mygoggie]

PAD as in Paper Aided Design! If you had used cardboard it would have been CAD.

Well you got me there!!! :-D

[ViperR]

Enlighten me?

I draw the layout in 2D on CAD to get the correct measurements of my tracing and am really not clued up to do a 3D drawing using these measurements for CNC purposes.

Getting the 3D model will be easy. The CAM side is a different story.

It’s dependent on which post processor you will be using.
The machine used to cut the bush. Usually
A lathe but it doesn’t mean a mill can’t do it.
The type and size of tool.
And then the type of operation.

Sorry can’t go into depth now. Got to run.

[plunger]

Looks like thread milling would be useful for this application.

Whats it for and what are the grooves for and what material is it to be made from.?

[mygoggie]

Looks like thread milling would be useful for this application.

Whats it for and what are the grooves for and what material is it to be made from.?

My Pajero's transfer case output shaft housing has this white metal bearing. The grooves are for oil lubrication so these needs to be in place. I will cast the new bobbit bearing and have it CNC'd hence the G-Code file requirements.

I simply asked here as hopefully one of the wise readers here can help me out.

[ViperR]

Oh, wow I read that post so quickly earlier today that I didn’t realise what it would entail. But my
Thoughts on it.

So getting the 3D cylinder is easy.
I have never done anything like this but
I would think that it would be possible to project that 2D sketch onto the inside of that cylinder to create the profile whereafter it could be extruded to created the recess

[plunger]

Is this bush unobtainium or do you have to buy a whole transfer case in order to get the bush. Cant you use a different product rather than babbit. ? Is the original babbit.