# Craftsman 109 lathe



## old redneck (Feb 18, 2014)

I picked up one of these recently for almost nothing, so I figured that my son and I would try to get it going. The lathe came to me pretty rusty, tailstock frozen, and generations of dirt dobber mud imbedded into every orafice. No tooling except a jacobs chuck mounted on the headstock spindle,not even a center. It passed thru a couple people who did nothing to it but let it sit. The original owner's Son in law has all the tooling for it in a craftsman tool box "somewhere" in his shed and he was also my brother officer during a combat deployment. When I get time to drive a few towns over, he will not care if I dismantle the place to find it. Meanwhile we needed a few basics.

After making all the tailstock except the casting and locking lever, adjusting the bearings, gibbs, cleaning the bed we got serious. All the reading I have done indicates that the spindle is treaded 1/2-20, not this one. This one is 5/8-16?? (Unified National Special Thread) to fit the drill chuck with it. No problem, I just threaded the end of the tailstock ram to fit it which solved one problem. A simple center was made with a light push fit into the tailstock except the last .10 inch is .001 over to make it snug but removable. The drive dog was made from a casting that my son machined, except for the internal single point threading. We put a center with an press fit into the nose of the drive dog and cut the 60 degree in place with the compound. After a few cuts and adjustments to the tailstock our test cuts have less than .0005 taper, but still a little rough.

A couple things that I want to point out that will be evident in the photos. During the tailstock rebuild I made a nut that prevents me from losing the tailstock wrench (I hate losing that), threaded the nose for direct fit of the jacobs chuck and made a bolt on replacement for a broken boss for one of the adjustment screws.

So far we are pleased with the results. Next I really need to scare up some missing gears for power feed, our hands got really tired. I hope this is not too long and rambling.


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