Newb questions about a Craftsman (Atlas) 101.06242 Lathe

[doobes]

Hi all,

Firstly, I'm a complete and total newbie into the world of lathes and turning.

I've been looking for an old smallish lathe for a while and snatched this up last month:



It'll get it cleaned up and mounted to a sturdy stand. I've got a 1/2hp 3 phase motor that I will use with a VFC to control the speed. I've got a similar setup on a drill press and it works great.

Anyway, the silly questions:

1) Does anyone know what the taper in the tailstock is on these? It's got a dead center and I want to get a live taper and a drill chuck.

2) I want to get a three (four?) jaw chuck to mount on the headstock. Any recomendations on a reasonably priced (~$100) chuck? The Oneway Talons are lovely, but spendy.

3) Similarly, any recommendations on good valued chisels?

I found the Wood Turners Workshop and will be reading feverishly,

Thanks for your patience.

[NCPaladin]

Here is a manual but it does not give the taper (or even if there is one).
http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/222/4685.pdf
There are charts online that give the diameter of tapers.

You will want a four jaw chuck.
Tools plus has the Nova G3 for $110 and you will need an insert to fit your lathe.
http://www.tools-plus.com/nova-chucks.html

I purchased some Hurricanes for my daughter and they are holding up well.
http://www.thewoodturningstore.com/categ...ols-4.html

[Doug_H]

Chris,

As I recall it is a #1 Morse taper. You can measure it with calipers. The large end of a #1 is 0.475" and a #2 MT is 0.7000". Tables are available on the internet. See this web page

I had this model lathe until a few years ago and did a lot of turning on it. It was entirely satisfactory, until I wanted a larger swing. For a lathe this size, the Barracuda chucks from Penn State Industries were fine for my needs and were good value for money as I recall. (You may need a spindle adapter) The headstock spindle is 3/4-16 as I recall (the outboard one is LH thread).

Choice of chisels depends on where you are in the "vortex", what you want to turn, and how you sharpen. These were all mysterious to me at one time. The experienced turners in this forum told me to sharpen on a high speed grinder with a soft (white) 60-80 grit wheel. I already had the HS grinder so that's what I did. I was somewhat unsure but they were right and that's how I do turning chisels now. No honing. The point is, if you will sharpen this way, look for inexpensive high speed steel chisels. Sharpening carbon steel this way takes a lot of skill and HS chisels are not that much more expensive. Get inexpensive chisels because you may grind away a fair bit of steel before you get good at it.

You can spend a lot of money unnecessarily on chisels. If you will doing mostly spindles you don't need "long and strong". I bought a few Benjamins Best from PSI and they seem just fine.

Keep the bearings oiled!

I used a 1/4 horse washing machine motor with a step pulley. It was on a rocker so that I could change pulleys easily. I seldom turned at high rpm, so some combinations were rarely needed.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have more questions

Doug

[Brian Myers]

Dougs got it , MT1 tapers , 3/4 x 16 tpi and a 5/8" toolpost.

[doobes]

Brian Myers said:

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Dougs got it , MT1 tapers , 3/4 x 16 tpi and a 5/8" toolpost.

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Kewl. Thanks a lot!

cheers,

[Rodneywt1180b]

You'll find a lot of info on that lathe at OWWM.com. It's a vintage machinery forum.
I've been keeping my eye open for one similar to it for a while now. Not that they're rare, just that it needs to be the right price at a time when I actually have money to spend. So far the stars haven't aligned.
It should be a great spindle lathe for you.
Rodney