Alterations to a BV20 Lathe.

[La Roculiere]

Without a photo of the original poster's lathe, it makes it somewhat difficult to give precise information. There is a plethora of 9 x 20 variants available - all slightly different to one another. To clear up one thing, though, the photo in omnimill's initial reply is actually MY lathe. The picture has somehow been lifted from my album! I'd recognise my garage/workshop anywhere! The lathe is actually marketed as a BL-200 bench lathe and I purchased it locally (relatively!) from Worken.fr in Caen, France about 3 years ago. Cost about €900 then including a 4-jaw chuck and full set of change gears and fixed steady etc. It'll cut metric and imperial threads with the supplied gears, when fitted in accordance with the table in the manual. My only criticisms would be that the slowest selectable spindle speed of 170 rpm is really too fast for screw threading and the cross slide lacks tee slots. I've removed the four position toolpost and replaced it with a QCTP imported from RDG in the UK. Vast improvement!

John

 

[Omnimill]

The very first job I did on my BV20 was to make the smallest possible pulley to reduce the speed on mine. Bottom speed is now 100 rpm which is much better for thread cutting.

 

[goldstar31]

In the Home Model Engineering Clearing House forum, there was quite a bit of correspondence on the 918/920 and how the lathe was altered to reduce the 130rpm( British version) and how to cut left hand threads. I described how I had fitted a steel subtable to accept Myford and similar accessories.
I'm still using them.

Cheers

Norman