Love of lathes.

[Retired]

Hi,

I intended to wander into the garage until I looked out to see pouring rain so once again I'll look into alternative drive belts for my Lorch. At the moment the Lorch has two new 1" wide leather belts installed and with skived hot hide glue joints giving truly endless belts without mechanical clips or fasteners and hopefully these two new belts will last for many years but I like to experiment.

I've seen "Balata" belting being sold through eBay and this belting is quite cheap in the 1" wide size so I've just been looking at this belting in a bit more detail. I'm pleased I was sitting down when I looked at the price to have this Balata belt joined by the supplier who uses the vulcanizing process as seen here;

http://www.stationaryengineparts.com/Vul...-Wide.html

Suddenly my leather belts are much more appealing and already I've saved a lot of money because I've successfully made three joints using hot hide glue. One of these joints was an original joint which failed but was very easy to re-join. I even pre-stretched my leather belts.

Balata belting would have been ideal for my Lorch but because Balata belting is rubberized jointing at home could be problematic and I'm not sure if hot hide glue would work?

I'll try to obtain modern timing belts either cogged or Poly-V to experiment with because these should be available used and cheap?

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/lorch/info

I've now joined the Yahoo group of Lorch lathe owners at the above link which was kindly supplied by Emma from Practical Machinist forum. I was very surprised to see the lathe I own turn up owned by Keith? eBay number 130962579136.

I'm now trying to track down history of this Lorch and find it a bit weird that this Lorch has changed owners three times in rapid succession? It's now found a good home and an owner who appreciates and will cherish it.

I'm now finding my way around this Lorch; I did some fine tuning on it yesterday and once I get into the garage I can move it into it's new permanent home against the wall in the garage; at the moment it is in the way and blocking access to my Startrite combination woodworking machine.

Here's a word of caution to anyone wishing to buy a lathe such as this; be aware that many vintage lathes did not accept what is now regarded as standard attachments usually having Morse taper's. The tail-stock on my Lorch is unusual in that it is neither Morse #1 or Morse #2. Morse #1 just rattles around whereas Morse #2 won't enter so it's imperative to ensure any such lathe is bought with it's associated attachments? Lorch parts/attachments are very expensive to buy even through eBay made much more difficult because little information is available as to the many assorted Lorch models made many were made to customer requirements.

The Jacob chuck certainly reminds me of what condition this Lorch was in only a short while ago. The Collets (two long in picture) are dead centers and 16mm types the other two shorter dead centers in the same picture locate in the tail-stock. I've added a couple of modifications as kindly suggested by Emma in adding a compression spring beneath the tool clamp and also added a steel shoe under the adjusting screw to prevent further wear to the top slide. The "domed" steel washer was also missing and this locates in a cup in the top face of the tool clamp allowing the clamp to pivot so I've turned a temporary domed washer which now works. The tapers on the tooling are only 30mm long but now the Lorch is fully running such tapers can be produced using this lathe; one huge benefit on this Lorch is a long top slide travel.

Kind regards, Col.