Subject: Need Advise on Motor Hp and Speed for Antique Lathe.

From: [email-masked] (Cryptical)
Date: 13 May 1996 05:41:00 GMT

Hi Guys.

I recently bought a pile of rusty lathe parts from a guys garage for $125.00. As 
we completely dissasembled,cleaned and reassembled each part from the rubble rose 
a mighty cool old Lathe. By pure chance the lathe was complete including 2 sets of 
change gears, tailstock, tool posts and tools,steady rest, face plates, lathe 
dogs, Belts, wrenches,milling attachment, and various other goodies.

The Lathe is a Barnes from Rockford Illinois. It has a 12" swing 5 foot bed and a 
pattent date of 1887. There is surprisingly little wear on this lathe. I have a 
feeling it was set up to do one thing on occation rather than being a general 
purpose job shop tool.

I did not however get a motor for the lathe.

It has an over the spindle frame with the upper pully set (wood) about 20 inches 
above the headstock of the lathe. This is where the motor mount plate is located.
The largest pully is about 10 or 11 inches in diameter.

Here are my questions:

1. What is the fastest speed I should run the spindle at. It has Bronze Bearings.
I can work the pully ratios back from the spindle to determine the actual Motor 
Rpm. I would like to obtain enough speed to do some wood turning and finishing.

2. How many Horsepower is recomended to run an old 12" metal lathe like this?

3. I am thinking of running a regular V belt from the motor to the upper pully set 
by nesting a cast V pully to the shaft assembly. How much do you think this will 
increase the performance Torque wise of the drive over the leather belt it used to 
have?? I will keep the leather belt of course running down to the spindle.

4. Is anybody out there a real lover of the flatbelt machines and systems? I am 
becoming very turned on by the antique machines and there function. I would love 
to get any leads to indivuals (Especialy in New England USA) who know of, own, or 
maintain such tools. I would like very much to visit such a shop.

5. Can anyone tell me more about this Lathe and its manufacturer.

I will in the next few weeks be putting my Machine tool restorations and Home shop 
development projects on line on in my web site. I will try to photograph it all 
and provide an interactive area for tips and tricks. I am building a library of 
technical books and have become very motivated to build a beautiful shop that I 
can make wierd shit in.

I need your help.

Visit my Website   http://www.dieco.com

I will set up a preliminary web page for the lathe project tomorow.

I will call it http://www.dieco.com/erik/shopnotes.html

I look forward to sharing my interests wth you all.

Thanks

Erik Larson

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From: [email-masked] (Randolph Lee)
Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 22:39:41 -0400

> maintain such tools. I would like very much to visit such a shop.

Try this Web site

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Precision_Museum/

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 13:07:01

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Cryptical) writes:
<snip>
>maintain such tools. I would like very much to visit such a shop.

Erick,  
	I presume you are in New England...visit the New England Society
of Model Engineers which meets at the Charles River Museum of Industry,
154 Moody St, Waltham, MA 02154 the first Thursday of each Month; 7-9:30 PM.
Many flat belt machines are on display and in use in the museum workshop. 

NEMES members have flat belt equipment (myself included).  Visit the 
Precision Museum in Windsor, VT.  Visit the Starrett Museum in Athol, MA.  
The Greenfield Museum in Gfld, MA is still in formation, but will have 
several flat belt machines tools in a production environment. (I say this  
since I am the one doing it   :-)   and want to have the equipment under
power and actually being used to make "stuff"...actually small items which
we hope can be purchased by visitors.)  Any day real soon  :-)  maybe '97.

Brothers Machine in North Andover has an antique flat belt lathe on display.

Flat belt machines are fading into history...even the local scrapyards
don't seem to have any left (having already scrapped most of them).
Folks who have them don't use them for modern high-power applications.  They 
can do a good job of work within their capacity, using carbon and HSS 
tooling, but that translates in *slow* in the commercial shop.  For the
hobbyist, its great.  Actually, the built in slippage of a flat belt acts
as a clutch or shear pin for those times when you have a crack-up, resulting
in minor damage to machine/tool/workpiece.  With a 10 hp gearhead machine 
the same accident results in expensive damage!  Also, flat belts have a 
satisfying (IMHO) sound, a gentle flap-flap, whirr-whirr..but just don't 
get yourself caught in the moving belt.  The belt shifters are fun to look
at, and at a glance you can figure out the speed ratios.

Cheers
Jay