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hey guys, my and my buddy josh just picked up a nice old southbend lathe. it's big, i took the advice on the forums and went for a bigger lathe then we think we'll need. it's a 12"x60" from 1919 i believe. bought it from a machinist, and it is pretty restored, in good working order, etc. we are going to clean it up and regrease it before we use it. i looked into lubes on some machine forums, and the answers are all over the place. i'm not sure if as a pipemaker, you would want to use different lube for any reason. basically, what lube do you use, and where? i'm sorry if this has been answered before, i tried to search and came up with nothing.

Mobil Vactra #2 for the ways and for anything that has an oil cup.
JAX synthetic gear lube for the gear train. Extremely sticky stuff and as such will not get slung all over the place. DO NOT get it on your clothes.

oklahoma red wrote:Mobil Vactra #2 for the ways and for anything that has an oil cup.
JAX synthetic gear lube for the gear train. Extremely sticky stuff and as such will not get slung all over the place. DO NOT get it on your clothes.

awesome, thank you for the reply! cleaning it up and putting it together tonight and we'll pick up more of the vactra tomorrow.

Luv the old American iron. Post a pic when you get'er going.
12 x 60 is definitely on the large side but it will surely work on a big Canadian.
And an adage to live by: "any oil is better than no oil". Butter with your briar anyone?

An after-thought: If the gear train is not well protected you might consider moly-disulfide or tungsten di-sulfide in lieu of the JAX. Both are dry film lubes and will not make a gawd-awful mess like the JAX (or anything like it) will do if totally exposed to briar dust. I would definitely use the dry lube on the saddle lead screw since it catches a lot of crap during turning.

oklahoma red wrote:An after-thought: If the gear train is not well protected you might consider moly-disulfide or tungsten di-sulfide in lieu of the JAX. Both are dry film lubes and will not make a gawd-awful mess like the JAX (or anything like it) will do if totally exposed to briar dust. I would definitely use the dry lube on the saddle lead screw since it catches a lot of crap during turning.

dude, thank you so much. if you find your way to northern CA the first beverage is on me. i'm grabbing the lube this week and the lathe should be reassembled in the new year (my buddy leaves on friday for vacation, and i leave right after xmas so we are spending this time learning more than anything. here are some bad pics of where it was when we bought it. it was hard to get a full picture because the workshop was all torn apart and i couldn't get a good angle. it has a much nicer home now:




and i know, wrench on the ways... i didn't do that.

Any oil is better than no oil. I use just plain old engine oil, 20-40 usually. We are pipemaking, not NASA engineering, you just need to keep things running smooth and free from rust. Be sparing on anywhere that oil might meet with the briar, that's a lathe specific thing you will have to learn for yourself.

Now THAT is one top-heavy hunk of iron! I bet moving was fun. Looks to be in good shape for being close to 100 years old!

Yip, that is one stunning piece of machinery!

caskwith wrote:Any oil is better than no oil. I use just plain old engine oil, 20-40 usually. We are pipemaking, not NASA engineering, you just need to keep things running smooth and free from rust. Be sparing on anywhere that oil might meet with the briar, that's a lathe specific thing you will have to learn for yourself.

kind of what i thought, but i figured i'd ask the experts. i didn't want to be the guy to ruin a 100 year old lathe! it's currently well lubricated, and in great shape. i just wanted to thoroughly clean it and get any residual metal chips out of the way and prepare it right. we also picked up a grizzly 9x19 for a song with tons of tooling. used it a bit last night, it was a learning experience. the g4000 seems like a pretty beginner friendly machine, and i'm glad we have a bigger lathe too, because we can probably outgrow that quickly. especially since i want to turn some metal as well.

don't worry, i'll be bugging you guys a bit. now to make some damn pipes and figure it out myself...

oklahoma red wrote:Now THAT is one top-heavy hunk of iron! I bet moving was fun. Looks to be in good shape for being close to 100 years old!

moving it was kind of awesome. we took it apart and loaded it in a truck, the guys we bought it from used a scissor jack to get the ways in the bed of the truck. everything else could be lifted with one or two guys. then right after the ways where loaded (like within 10 seconds) the scissor jacks sold to a guy. so when we got it to josh's house we had five guys help pull it out of the truck, hold it while the legs got bolted on, and move it in place. it was a blast. especially since i had to go to work right after!

somedumbjerk wrote:

caskwith wrote:Any oil is better than no oil. I use just plain old engine oil, 20-40 usually. We are pipemaking, not NASA engineering, you just need to keep things running smooth and free from rust. Be sparing on anywhere that oil might meet with the briar, that's a lathe specific thing you will have to learn for yourself.

kind of what i thought, but i figured i'd ask the experts. i didn't want to be the guy to ruin a 100 year old lathe! it's currently well lubricated, and in great shape. i just wanted to thoroughly clean it and get any residual metal chips out of the way and prepare it right. we also picked up a grizzly 9x19 for a song with tons of tooling. used it a bit last night, it was a learning experience. the g4000 seems like a pretty beginner friendly machine, and i'm glad we have a bigger lathe too, because we can probably outgrow that quickly. especially since i want to turn some metal as well.

don't worry, i'll be bugging you guys a bit. now to make some damn pipes and figure it out myself...

It's very hard to ruin a lathe with too much lube! Sliding surfaces need a light-medium oil, spindles would ideally use something a little thinner, depends on what kind of bearings you have really. Gears, especially if open will want a specific gear train oil or heavy grease, mostly to stop it flying around everywhere.
Chucks should be lightly greased on the moving parts.

In an ideal world you would oil your lathe BEFORE you use it each day, in reality most parts of the lathe will hold onto enough oil for several uses. If you intend to carry out a long turning session then stop every hour or so, check the temperature of your bearing surfaces and top up any oil cups.

I have a South Bend 9" and I get my oil from this guy:
http://m.ebay.com/itm/321146352222?nav=SEARCH

And if you're looking to get rebuild parts, this guy will usually have what you want: http://m.ebay.com/itm/150424878788?nav=SEARCH

Hope this helps