Love of lathes.

[Retired]

Hi,

Thanks Colin; that is decent of you. It's possible the motor might even be an early Brook Motor because Brooks made so many different types of motor and were certainly in business when this Lorch was imported? Not all Brook Motors have Brook Motor nameplates because the "Nameplate office" had lots of customers own nameplates which were added in despatch if stock motors from the warehouse or at assembly if the motors were made to order in the "JIT" cells as many were. If I still worked at Brooks I could easily have checked?

I spent this morning de-greasing the Lorch head-stock which was a tiresome dirty job. I bought 5 ltrs of Gunk at Rufforth Auto Jumble but decided not to use the Gunk because when I used it to de-grease the bed I was unhappy with the result. After applying the Gunk to the bed using a brush I then power washed the bed but found the bed still appeared to have a fine greasy film with beads of water rolling from it; not at all what I would expect from using a de-greasing agent?

I wondered if I would have been better off this morning removing the thickest of the oil/grease with rags then dunk the head-stock into a bucket of hot water with washing powder added? However when I got into the garage I remembered I had bought a spray can of brake cleaner whilst at Rufforth so would this work? What a difference this brake cleaner made in killing the "oiliness" much better than Gunk and also much quicker. As the brake cleaner evaporated it left a dry surface so I then attacked the head-stock with an assortment of scrapers following up with the electric drill fitted with a small de-coke wire brush. By dinner time elbow stopped work; my right elbow has been giving me some grief possibly due to over-use on this restoration so this afternoon I've had an easier time taking Bron to a craft store. The head-stock though is looking much cleaner; ideally I would have blasted it using the compressor and soda/hard media blaster but after a ferocious thunder and lightning storm last night everything was soaking wet outside so I didn't want to mess the driveway up with blasting media? The weekend is forecast much warmer so hopefully I can think about applying paint to the head-stock; whilst at it I will also paint the tail-stock; I'm pretty sure I have some etching primer to hand so its a compressor spray gun job?

I tried to take a close up image of the damaged screw using my new camera but for some reason unknown to me the camera refused to focus clearly in "Macro" mode?

One job I did successfully though was to remove the Stedall nameplate without damaging it; rather than try to remove the rivets by levering them I simply sheared them using a sharp scraper and hammer. I then punched the remains of the rivets to the bottom of their blind location holes; it will be easy to re-drill for new rivets.

As long as I keep working steadily away on this Lorch restoration the job will get done; it's pointless ignoring a lot of elbow pain so a few extra days or even weeks won't hurt anything; one thing is certain I'll not rush this job just to complete it.

Once the etching primer is blown on then I think I'll finish using rattle can black auto acrylic on both head-stock and tail-stock; too much light green might be overbearing?

Kind regards, Col.