On Tue, 21 Jun 2011 04:46:07 -0700 (PDT), Jim Wilkins
wrote:

On Jun 21, 2:09Â*am, "Harold & Susan Vordos" wrote:
...
If memory serves, that will get the tailstock in proper alignment with the
spindle for a given length, but may or may not reflect a bed that is not
properly leveled. Â* You'd make adjustments by setting over the tailstock,
that would yield a straight turn, that's true, but that may not reflect a
true condition of the bed as it relates to the spindle. Â*Chucking a short
piece of large diameter stock would likely disclose error because of twist
in the bed. Â* That's the condition that is addressed by the use of a level.

Harold

If you slid the tailstock close to the headstock and aligned them with
the tailstock offset, then slid the tailstock to the end and shimmed
the bed to turn (or indicate) the same diameter at both ends, wouldn't
the bed and tailstock be correctly adjusted?

I have one of these South Bends on a sheet-metal cabinet.
http://users.consolidated.net/jimkull/10LDRO2.jpg

Dayum, is that a 500 hour rebuild? Fair lady!



The tailstock end sits on a lengthwise pivot rod that lets the bed
straighten itself when the two opposing clamp screws are loosened. The
front one is within the red circle on the foot, a brass plate marked
"leveling screw".

The lathe has been temporarily parked on blocks where it was delivered
for the last 20 years and the head end isn't level. I shimmed the
level at the spindle to align one end of the bubble with a mark and
then moved level and shim to the tail end to put the bubble in the
same place with the leveling screws. It's not level but the tilt is
the same at both ends.

Until this thread today, I had wondered why people went to so much
trouble to level a lathe. It wasn't until I saw the word "twist" that
I realized they were leveling it both ways, not just lengthwise.
DUH! whap, whap, whap


Just rechecked. The rear way is 0.032" low at both ends. A genuine
South Bend lathe level is about 1/4 as sensitive as a VIS that reads
0.0005IN/10IN.

You did that to enhance way oil migration, right?

--
"Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty.
There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and
indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration
of virtue. These amiable passions, are the latent spark. If
the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling
the differences between true and false, right and wrong,
virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of
mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?"
--John Adams