Finished

May 2015

The very last job involved reconditioning the brass gearbox plate. I tried various ways of spraying it and trying to sand off the paint on the raised parts with fine sandpaper around a flat block, but the plate is just too old and warped. So in the end, I had to bite the bullet and do it manually, with tins of humbrol enamel and a fine brush. I used matchsticks cut diagonally and dipped in thinners to take any overpainting off the raised areas; this worked quite well after the paint had been left overnight so was dry but not cured. Very fiddly and took hours; but, although not perfect, it is a great improvement:

           

And really that's it, for now. It's all up and running and as accurate as I'm likely to need, at the moment at least. If I ever do decide to get it re-ground, and/or make a new leadscrew, at least I know how it comes apart now! And won't need to dismantle and rebuild absolutely everything either. A bit of a long process, but the lathe is much, much better to use now so very much worth it I think. Part of me would have liked to have done a really nice paint job, with filler and smoothing, as some of the paint jobs online look amazing. But ultimately I have other things to do and the lathe is a tool, not a museum piece.

At this point I should be showing some pics of the thing, all shiny and clean. Unfortunately, some buffoon has parked an MGB in front of it with no suspension; so this is the best view of it at the moment:

When I've got the car back on its wheels, I'll post some pics of the lathe, just to finish things off