![atlas lathe bed repair atlas lathe bed repair](https://eadn-wc03-4736907.nxedge.io/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/0191.jpeg)
After some serious muscle work (almost all from Metalerman), we finally managed to get the main spindle and bearings out and I was able to wipe off 40 years of grease to get a date. So the all important day comes when we disassemble the headstock for the first time. Some minor repair work was needed on several components but the majority of the work was done with good old fashioned sweat and elbow grease. All the old paint from a badly done restore 30+ years ago had to be stripped off and the pieces wire wool sanded clean by hand.
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Each one of the over 1000 components from the huge one piece Lathe bed to the tiniest grub screw was removed and cleaned. So began the long, occasionally frustrating, very very dirty but great fun job of stripping down the machine to it's component parts. At the time, one of the best and (and due to American Mass production techniques, cheapest) multi-speed, multi-geared, powered cross feed lathes on the market was the Atlas 10F made by the Atlas Press Company of Kalamzoo, Michigan, USA. Whilst much of the focus of these purchases were on ships, vehicles and armaments, Britain also required large quantities of machine tools to equip it's massively expanding armaments industry.Īs any good machinist knows, one of the mainstays of an engineering workshop is a Lathe, especially when you are having to produce huge quantities of gun barrels, threaded screws and the 101 other steel, aluminium and brass widgets and thingamajigs that go into building war machines and their weapons. Prior to the signing of the Lend Lease Act by President Roosevelt in March of 1941, Britain had been buying war materiel from the United States on a Cash and Carry basis. Might this lathe be connected somehow with the monumental war effort of Britain during World War II. The more we dug into the history, the more exciting the project became. After a little digging on the web we established this was an American made lathe dating back to the 1940 -1950's. As with all restoration projects, the first thing to do is research.