I went out to the shop yesterday and was planning on spending a few hours machining pieces and parts but the old South Bend lathe decided differently. I put the lathe in back gear and was drilling a hole when it popped out of back gear and then locked itself into direct drive. So now instead of eight speeds, I have four speeds. The problem being that the faster speeds will burn up the my big drill bits and you have to be one damn good lathe hand to thread up to a shoulder without crashing the tooling at the higher speeds. And since the job I was working on needed a large drilled hole and threads up to a shoulder, that pretty well put me out of business.
I took it apart right away and got the book out. It looks like it should come apart relatively easy - a couple of the gears are pressed on - and then I can check out what locked up behind the bull gear (the big gear on the right). The headstock was getting a little loose and the back gear needed to be checked out, anyway. The good thing is the bearing surfaces look really good. Hopefully I can get it fixed and back together again fairly quickly. I've got several projects cooking right now, all in need of some lathe work.
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