Sunday 20 January 2019

What the chuck ... and servicing the tail-stock on my Rhino-/Coronet-Lathe

During those quiet days between Christmas and New Years Eve, I stumbled over an ad for a 200mm (8") Emco chuck just like mine, allegedly NOS and with both sets of jaws for a price around the same as a new Chinesium one. Originally I tried to convince the seller to simply sell me the outer jaws, but as he wouldn't, I bought the whole set, thinking that I may use the old Emco chuck on the rotary table of the mill and still have the external jaws to swap in, if I don't need 'em on the lathe.

One of the things you only notice, when you have to carry that chuck around: It is epically heavy. A bit of wood was placed over the bed ways to protect them, in case the chuck would fall off. (It didn't the fit of the chuck and backplate is a lovely ever so slight interference fit, which means it needs a bit of gentle *tappy-tap-tap* with a rubber mallet to come of.)


New one installed. You gotta love vintage engineering, the overall dimensions on the backside are the same to within 1/10mm and the chuck sits on just as nicely as the old one.


The last thing I had to address was the quill-lock on the tail-stock. Lately I ran a live center in the tailstock only to find out, that even though the quill would lock nicely, releasing wasn't exactly in the cards.


As it turned out, the sliding bit was well rusty (as so many parts on this lathe) and simply didn't mean to move at all.



The verdict: Even though not strictly necessary, the new Emco-chuck was definitely a nice investment, it will have to have its innards cleaned out and a regrease. And then there's the elephant in the room: I want and have to get the chuck's backplate off to get the spindle(s) out and replace the drive belt, clean out the old grease from the spindle bearings and ideally also replace the seals. And when I am doing that, I'll also address the runout-issue of the primary drivebelt and install a reversing switch for the motor, so I can run the motor in reverse for thread-cutting. And most likely, when I have all those bits of anyway, I'll treat it to a coat of happy engineering grey, because the flaky and faded green disturbs my workshop Feng-Shui. 😜

A shoutout to all Coronet Lathe users: Should any of you have a user-manual or technical data and/or drawings please let me know as they would come in extremely handy

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