old lathe

Jul 26, 2004 3 Replies

so today I was given an old lathe.



it's not much, in fact it's a lot less lathe than the one I already had, so it's pretty unlikely I'll use it. it's a dunlap from probably the 50's, plain bearing headstock (a bit sloppy), 3 groove pulley, folded sheet metal ways, outboard disk sander with a table with a miter slot. maybe 30" between centers, maybe 8" swing. cool futuristic



50's styling.

I'll clean it up. maybe put it on a stand, think about upgrading the bearings and probably not do it, and try to find a kid with a burning desire to turn wood to give it to.



anybody here ever get anything useful out of one of these?



Bridger


Well you could always fix it up to be a finishing lathe. That is, do most of the sanding and such on your main lathe and use the dunlap for applying finishes and such.

No. First lathe I bought for 100 at a garage sale, the thing didn't even have a MT in the headstock, and some weird spindle size/thread. It was also missing a part that advanced the tailstock. I guess I got the money's worth, tho, as it came with a good new motor. I'll probably set up a grinding/buffing/sanding station with it, if I can ever connect the spindle threads to an arbor of some kind. Be nice to the "kid", if the bearings are really shot, or the headstock won't take modern drives, etc, find some use for it for yourself.

no tapers anywhere on this lathe...

the head spindle isn't even threaded. the spur is on the shaft with setscrews.

tailstock advances fine and locks down, but it has a built in dead center. not much option to use different tooling on this lathe.

this came with a newish looking motor. haven't tested it yet though.

the bearings are a little sloppy, but I suspect that they aren't too different from when it was new. basically, it's a light spindle lathe with no real way to do much else on it. I suspect that it will be OK for that. it'll benefit from being bolted to a solid bench. whoever ends up with it is likely to outgrow it quickly, but it's a way to get the feets wet....

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