I finally understood what was wrong. My own reconstruction of what
happened at some point prior to my lathe purchase, is as follows: the
missing spring holding the lower bar (see picture) broke or was
lost. Because of this, the lathe would not turn on. Then the dumbass
who was fixing the lathe tried to rewire the starter. To no
avail. Then he or she inserted red plastic blocks into the size 0
starter, therefore fixing it mechanically to be always on.


When I realized the nature of these red plastic blocks, the fix was
obvious: remove then, rewire the starter for a single non-momentary
switch, and use a spring to fix the original mechanical problem. I was
very lucky, because I had a nice coil spring assortment (pictured).

So, as of now, the problem is fully resolved and the ON/OFF/BRAKE
switch works great!

More pix at

http://igor.chudov.com/projects/Clau...On-Off-Switch/

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