So I did it. I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while and I finally sprung for it. I bought a honest-to-goodness old-fashioned watchmaker’s lathe.
I had started experimenting with gravers and the WR Smith T-Rest on the Sherline lathe. It worked well enough but the cross-slide kept getting in the way. I would want to support something with the tailstock but it’s not easy (or at least not obvious) how to get rid of the saddle. The saddle and the t-rest forced the tailstock too far away.
There’d been a lathe that I’d been eyeing for some time on Craigslist. The seller (who turns out to be a very nice gentleman) had been slowly lowering the price. I stopped by and purchased it. I should have spent some more time going over it first but the whole shelter-in-place thing was going on and I felt bad going there.
Needless to say, it’s absolutely beautiful:
Unfortunately, the gentleman had purchased it but never used it, so it has some teething issues. The bearings are straight and runout appears good (I haven’t measured it yet). I oiled the end caps and cleaned it off a bit. Took the cross-slide apart and cleaned it up. The cross-slide has a rocker tool post. I’m not used to this, so it’ll take some practice to get tools lined up on center.
I was really excited to bust out the t-rest and use my graver on it – the whole reason for buying this lathe! – but alas, it did not work. The t-rest is a wonderful flip-down version. It consists of a bracket that fits on the bed, a slotted bar that slides on that bracket, and then a flip-down pipe to hold the tool rest. Here’s a picture of the slotted bar with the tool rest flipped down, removed from the bracket. It’s stamped “201” which probably meant something to somebody many years ago.
The bracket is definitely meant for this lathe, but it appears that the slotted bar and pipe (which are pivot-riveted together) were for the Reform-style lathe, which has a 5mm higher center height. As a result, the lowest the t-rest can go is 4mm above center 🙁
I could grind down the post so the tool rest can sit lower, but I don’t like destroying a tool that someone else (or myself!) might want to use later. I could try to find another flip-down on eBay by itself. I’ve managed to find one, but it comes with a lathe, so it’s prohibitively expensive 🙂 So… I’ll make one! It won’t be flip down, but it should still work well.