Scraping/restoring an old Harding Cataract lathe

[Holescreek]

Since I was the one that brought up the scraping forum idea I ought to at least post something new. I used to be a member of the Yahoo groups scraping forum when I was in the process of self teaching myself scraping. My big thread title was something like "Does everybody leave after they learn how to scrape?" or something like that, and I answered my own question afterwards as I have never been back.

I don't scrape very often, mostly when I have to when the part I need flat won't fit on my surface grinder. I have a project Cataract lathe I started a few years ago but never finished. I got all of the replacement parts made and the bed scraped in but got into other projects before I could paint it.

Here was the lathe as found:




After pulling it all apart, here is the original scraping/flaking found under the headstock:


I wish I knew a 10th about scraping as the fellows that flaked those ways!

After removing all of the old paint I blued up thesmall 9x12" surface plate I use for marking and ran it over the freshly stoned ways. Here is the result:

[Holescreek]

After several dozen runs of blueing and scraping, changing directions after each rub I arrived here:




Scraping is one of those skills that when you need them they're good to have, but frankly, unless you are getting paid to do it, it's just a lot of work! Over the course of a few days working a couple of hours a day with the manual (hand) scraper I finally arrived here:

[Holescreek]

I had to replace or repair a lot of components that were broken or missing. I was lucky that there was a lot of information available on these lathes. I used the printout in the photo below to try to accurately reproduce the missing Y axis handle and the T handle for the lantern tool post.



You can also see in the pic the repair parts I had to make to fix the broken T slot the lantern tool post rides in. No doubt about it, this little lathe wasn't a showpiece all of it's life. I found it interesting that in the printout, everything was scraped and flaked, even where it didn't matter.

As I was getting ready to paint the bed and headstock I went through all of the components. Aside from putting them into a box a few years ago, this was the last time I looked at all of the parts together:


Before everything got boxed up I had the main components taped off and shot several coats of primer on the iron. The Cataract lathe (still in pieces)has resided on the accessory shelf of my grandfathers Atlas for several years now.

[Carl_In_NH]

Very nicely done.

-Carl