Hi Jim, thanks for your reply.

(my responses below...)


"jim rozen" wrote in message
...
In article , William Wixon says...

http://www.frontiernet.net/~wwixon/lathe1.jpg

OK, you have inherited a Seneca Falls Star lathe. Those are nice
machines but there are a few things you should be aware of:

1) I don't think the crossfeed screw on that machine has a micrometer
dial on it, the kind with divisions. Check to see.

this lathe does have a micrometer dial on the crossfeed whatchamacallit.


2) Be very careful about one particular issue with it:

DO NOT ENGAGE THE HALF NUTS AND THE CARRIAGE FEED AT THE SAME TIME!

you know, i think this has already been to this lathe. the levers and
handles on the "saddle"(?) all behave oddly and one of the bolts holding one
of the gears (inside) wobbles when the handles are turned back and forth.



Most modern machines have a lockout to prevent this, but this machine
is old enough to allow that to happen. If you are driving the
leadscrew and you do that, it will blow up something in the geartrain
because it basically locks the leadscrew solid.

thanks very much for hte words of warning.


The first issue (if the machine has no micrometer dial) is tolerably
easy to fix, you can simply replace the existing leadscrew and nut
on the slide, with a modern type with a dial. You could also simply
install a dial indicator on the cross slide.

They are not bad machines, mostly they were designed to be foot-treadle

i was astounded when i saw the pictures (w/ treadles) of it in the link Gary
Owens provided earlier in this thread.
http://www.lathes.co.uk/senecafalls/index.html
(sad thing, after seeing those pictures i started to have a very faint vague
recollection i've seen those treadle pedals somewhere before but can't place
where. i'm afraid there's a possibility that MAYBE i saw the treadle pedals
somewhere in the basement of the house where i got the lathe. got the lathe
from the widow of a guy who used to belong to a eaa chapter i belonged to.
she donated the lathe. she didn't even go down into teh basement with me
when i went to pick it up to show me what's what. i collected up everything
i could see that wsa obviously belonging to the lathe in the general area
that the lathe occupied (in the crowded and disorganized basement) and may
have seen the treadle pedals somewhere down there but, and i'm only guessing
that this is what happened, it was a while ago, disregarded them as
belonging to the lathe. that would be SAD, because i'm imagining the family
of the lady (she died not very long after i picked up the lathe) rented a
dumpster and loaded all the "junk" in teh basement into it. sad that the
original parts of this lathe got seperated from it!


powered and are found in place converted over to electric motor drive.
The bearings in the headstock are typically bronze and often need a bit

the headstock bearings in this lathe are bronze. i shined them up with
steel wool. look nice. thing is though, between the chuck and headstock
someone chopped off the bronze and put in a (ball?) thrust bearing (or what
i assume is a thrust bearing).

of TLC and shimming to get them to run nicely, but they do. The

when i opened up the caps on the bearings there were paper shims in there.
i'm thinking i'm going to cut up an aluminum soda can and use it to shim the
bearings.

spindle nose is a bit of an odd thread so be sure to keep any tooling
that came with the machine, no matter how crusty.

thanks for the heads up.



More photos of seneca falls star lathes:

http://www.metalworking.com/DropBox/_2000_retired_files/Seneca1.jpg

http://www.metalworking.com/DropBox/_2000_retired_files/Seneca2.jpg

http://www.metalworking.com/DropBox/_2000_retired_files/Seneca3.jpg

http://www.metalworking.com/DropBox/_2000_retired_files/Seneca4.jpg

The oilers on the heastock spindle are of course non-original, I put
those there. You can see there are a bunch of similarities between
yours and my lathes, and some differences too.

wow! cool photos! thanks for posting the links!
i don't know why it didn't occur to me until long after my original post but
i finally went out and did some searches on the web and found some other
links. i didn't bookmark them so i have to go back to find them but if you
don't already know about them i'll find them and post them here.



The biggest difference is, yours has a compound on top of the cross
slide. Mine was delivered without that. The overall carriage layout
is however pretty similar though, with some stylistic differences
between them. I suspect yours is a more modern version, the serial
number is stamped on the bed, right near the leadscrew bracket on
the tailstock end.

after wiping off the crud i finally noticed the serial numbers stamped on
the bed, like you said. serial number 4793. cast into the bed are dates
1885, 1889, 1895, 1896, and last Apr. 14, 1896. i would like to know about
when this lathe was made.



Jim



thanks.

b.w.