Lathe come home. (No, I don't have a lithp, why?)

[footfootfoot]

Long

So, I've been working on candlestick designs and have made a few prototypes as well as making some mandrels and task specific chucks for other quick, salable turning projects.

I've been using a pre-1939 Walker-Turner Driver L-752 that I was given about 20 years ago. It was in pieces and in rough shape, I cleaned it up, painted it, and got it back together as best I could; the spindle was pretty gnarly but it worked.

Over time it's developed a lot of run-out and last week it had gotten to where the centers couldn't line up because the point of the drive center was almost 1/8" off radially from the tail center.

Time to tear it apart. I couldn't remember what it looked like inside and was surprised to see just how fucked up the spindle was. I got it out and removed the bearings, which appeared fine.

I checked the spindle, nominally 1"x12tpi RH thread inboard and 12tpi LH thread outboard w/ #2MT and 9/16" bore. As I measured with my calipers I found that the spindle was .994" where the inboard bearing is seated, and .992" everywhere else. It is all grooved and scarred from set screws that had been loose and the 4 step pulley slipping around the spindle, and other hackery that predated me.

I figured I'd just get a new spindle and call it good. Well, there's not much call for 78 year old spindle replacement parts and it is a unique item, so I figured I'd make do and just throw some new bearings on since one of them was OEM C.1939.

On researching the thing a bit it turns out that W-T made the spindle in an unusual diameter, 25.21mm or .9925" (although I read .994") and fitted it with a custom bearing from SKF, one that doesn't even show up on their website. Apparently W-T wanted you to buy replacement bearings from them rather than SKF. So the front bearing is a weird number (FH I-70372 EC) and the rear bearing is (L-05-Z)

Turns out, that the outboard bearing is a replacement and the wrong size, it's a 6205 which is supposed to be 25x52x14mm which is weird because it easily slides all the way along the spindle which is supposedly 25.21mm. the bearing measures 1.001" and the spindle measures .994" at its widest so it makes sense that the 6205 would slide, but how did the ID get stretched?

OEM bearing, FH I-70372 EC, fits tight but my measurements don't equal 25.21mm, they come in at .995" or 25.27mm. And that explains the tight fit. My caliper is zeroed, but maybe it is just wrong.

So I can the 78 year old bearing back in or try to find another that fits it. I don't think they make them, nor the outside bearing either. One option would be to turn down the spindle to a common bearing size. There are occasionally WT heads for sale on ebay but who knows what conditon the shaft and bearings are in?

I've got to stew on this. I'm not sure how much of this makes any sense. I'm not even sure I understand it.