A Warner & Swasey Fan - Just bought a No. 3

@ thermite,

Surely you don't think that someone who already has been doing some blacksmith work hasn't already watched tons of Blacksmithing videos?

I've watched everything from the pros who have the very best equipment to the backyard wannabe blacksmith that makes do with whatever they can find. A lof of them used old engine blocks or heads as their make-shift anvils.

In fact, it's often much better to pay more attention to the finished products they actually make rather than what tools they are using. Some of those backyard blacksmiths using makeshift equipment often turn out some pretty nice finished products.

And you're right, this is quite a derail from a Warner & Swasey lathe thread. But stuff happens.

I'm not personally too worried about the content of this particular thread. When I get this lathe up and running I'll most likely start making videos on it anyway and move over to one of my YouTube channels.


So far we've covered bathroom flooring, and anvils. Today I'm working on my woodstove heating system. Not sure when I'll have time to get back to the lathe. Like I said other places in this thread, I bought the lathe for a winter project while the buying was good and the weather was good. So I wasn't really planning on working on it right away anyway. Although it would be nice to fire it up and see it run.

Give me a week or so on that while I build the RPC. I'll need to order some parts and wait for those to come in first. So it will be a while.

Sweet Dreamer said:

@ thermite,

Surely you don't think that someone who already has been doing some blacksmith work hasn't already watched tons of Blacksmithing videos?

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LOL!

Surely I DO!

It's the railroad-rail thing!

Real anvils exist!

Mind it's like asking a guy if he has quit beating his wife yet.

As with the railroad rail, it can get you some "looks".. even if he has never been married..

Homebrewblob said:

Hey sweet dreamer I’ll let you in on a secret, you don’t HAVE to respond to thermites posts, check his post count!

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Thanks, HBB. Sounds like good advice.

Sweet Dreamer said:

Thanks, HBB. Sounds like good advice.

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To be fair... he's not wrong.

It can be like arguing with a library... Big one. REALLY BIG one!
Dynamically expandable, yet. And rapidly so!

More useful to ask for something you cannot find .... and get back free research.

Information Worker thing at a Stone Soup party. Bring what you got. No one goes away hungry. Annoyed, maybe. But hungry, not so much!

"From each, according to his ability..."


PM at work. Doing what PM does best.

Even if some prefer the "ignore" feature!

thermite said:

More useful to ask for something you cannot find .... and get back free research.

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I'll definitely keep that in mind. Next time I'm looking for information on something I can't find I'll give you holler.

Sweet Dreamer said:

I'll definitely keep that in mind. Next time I'm looking for information on something I can't find I'll give you holler.

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Not kidding. I enjoy it.

And your tax dollars - rather a LOT of them, per each of we few so selected - long ago paid to train me to be rather GOOD at finding stuff that some one didn't even want found at all!

Getting sloppy in me dotage, but it helps to exercise..

thermite said:

Not kidding. I enjoy it.

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I'm serious too. There are times when I can't find information I want no matter how hard I try. Although, sometimes it's difficult to explain exactly what I'm looking for.

One example is with a math problem I'm working on. I'm not even sure how to explain the problem, much less search for the answer. It has to do with finding the limit of a certain relationship. The only problem is that the relationship is not easy to describe. Nor can it easily be made into a simple equation. If it was that easy I would have already found the answer.

I usually do find "impossible" information. For example, I bought a fitness band and I wanted to run the software on an old Amazon Tablet. Most everywhere I went the answer was simple, "It can't be done". This included the manufacture of the fitness band.

One might stop searching right there figuring the answer has already been found. But I didn't quit. I keep searching geek sites and posts until I finally found the answer I was looking for. There is a way to run their software on an old Amazon Tablet and apparently even the manufacturers of the fitness band aren't aware of how to do it. It actually wasn't all that hard to do it once you know the secrets.

I almost gave up on that one, but perseverance paid off. I've been using my fitness band with my old Amazon Tablet now all the time. It works just fine.

Sweet Dreamer said:

One example is with a math problem I'm working on.

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Math is my worst area. 88th percentile on tests. That's an outright disaster by comparison.

And part of why I learned to EMPLOY A++ Engineers and such instead of performing at a B-minus meself. I was alredy around 30 years of age when an Egyptian Prof, Dr. Thanaa Khalil, ex University of Cairo, teaching evening courses at Point Park in Pittsburgh got me past a block and I started clocking solid "A's" and the only "A" on his final (Calculus & such).

I simply do math DIFFERENTLY than what is in most "western" books.

As did the Egyptians!

But I still hire it done.

Among other reasons, a Manager can put "many" experts onto a task, "paralleled" at the same time. Not just one at a time or "in serial".



Work into your strengths. Cover weaker areas with the strengths of others, and you have a healthy and winning team.

PM does that, most days.

thermite said:

Work into your strengths. Cover weaker areas with the strengths of others, and you have a healthy and winning team.

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I find myself agreeing with you on most things. I guess this means that I already know pretty much everything you know.

I totally agree that learning how to allocate other work to the right people is the way to go. I would love to find a mathematician who could solve my problem.

I've actually been pretty good at math. Especially calculus. In fact, I could probably have solved this problem in my younger days when I was sharp. Lately my mind has been seriously failing me. No joking, when people ask me my phone number I actually have to stop and think about that for a while before I can remember it.

But then again, I never call myself so why should I know my phone number? If I was living with someone else I'd probably know the number very well. But when you're a hermit it's easy to not know your own phone number.

I've been meaning to post the problem on a math forum, but I'm not even sure how to describe it exactly. In fact, if I could do that I could probably solve it myself. Learning how to describe the problem sufficiently is 99.9% of the way to solving it.

Ok thermite, I got you an information problem to solve:

I need to know what capacitor to use for a General Electric 220 volt 1PH motor.

Here's the GE part number: 5kcp48TG1815

I type that part number into Google and it isn't found.

I type that part number into GE parts site and get the following message:

We did not find any matches for your search: 5KCP48TG1815

All I want to know is what size and type of capacitor to use. It's not a start-up capacitor, it's a continuous-run capacitor. I was just told in another thread that if I use a start-up capacitor the cap will blow.

Sweet Dreamer said:

But then again, I never call myself so why should I know my phone number? If I was living with someone else I'd probably know the number very well. But when you're a hermit it's easy to not know your own phone number.

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Same reason when someone asks me my name, I ask them if they are in a hurry?

When I am cussing my self, for doing something stoopid, I'm just "DUMBASS!" out of laziness.

If I answered "DUMBASS" they might take it as an insult?

So I have found it more harmonious to stop and think.

If you call 911, they will ask you for your current phone number.....

digger doug said:

If you call 911, they will ask you for your current phone number.....

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No need.

I keep pistols loaded so I can just shoot myself rather than get sucked into the organized crime web of the US Health Scare system and leave my Widow bankrupted.

Yep, this thread is definitely a train wreck.

No problem. I'm too busy to be working on the Warner & Swasey right now anyway. I did check the oil in it. It appears to be full. I haven't drained it yet. Someone, I think it might have been Docs, said to replace the oil with automatic transmission fluid? It's going to be a while before I do that. I also might just filter the original oil and put it right back in again. That will depend on what it looks like when I drain it out.

I also need to figure out if there is a separate hydraulic reservoir for the hydraulics. It appears to have a second motor on it dedicated to the hydraulics? And I also need to learn about the coolant system pump and reservoir. From what I've read in manuals thus far the coolant system pump is driven by the main motor?

I'm just learning about this lathe so I have a long way to go yet. I'll have to spend a few night reading myself to sleep with the operator's manual.

In the meantime the whole shebang is pretty much on a back burner until I get some other home maintenance projects under control before winter weather sets in. I'm really excited about this Warner and Sawsey lathe though. I did have a chance to inspect it a little more closely last night. And thus far, the closer I inspect it the more pleased I am with it. It certainly appears to be in pretty good condition under superficial inspection. A lathe this nice for $302 isn't bad. Of course until I actually get it fired up I need to brace for a possible disastrous discovery somewhere down the road. It could still have some major problem that simply isn't visible.

Sweet Dreamer said:

I could have had a really nice vertical mill a while back for peanuts.

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You don’t happen to remember what kinda mill it was do you?

I seen a 9” BP on there awhile back and it was going for 800$!

I called to buy it and it was already bought!

I mean seriously they mark them as sold on the website immediately and I found it and called and bam! Sold, I refreshed my webpage and BAM!! F’n SOLD!

FML

I got my index 55 off HGR for 400$ and it has all the original scraping on every way. Must of been on drill duty for most it’s life!

Sweet Dreamer said:

Yep, this thread is definitely a train wreck.

No problem. I'm too busy to be working on the Warner & Swasey right now anyway. I did check the oil in it. It appears to be full. I haven't drained it yet. Someone, I think it might have been Docs, said to replace the oil with automatic transmission fluid? It's going to be a while before I do that. I also might just filter the original oil and put it right back in again. That will depend on what it looks like when I drain it out.

I also need to figure out if there is a separate hydraulic reservoir for the hydraulics. It appears to have a second motor on it dedicated to the hydraulics? And I also need to learn about the coolant system pump and reservoir. From what I've read in manuals thus far the coolant system pump is driven by the main motor?

I'm just learning about this lathe so I have a long way to go yet. I'll have to spend a few night reading myself to sleep with the operator's manual.

In the meantime the whole shebang is pretty much on a back burner until I get some other home maintenance projects under control before winter weather sets in. I'm really excited about this Warner and Sawsey lathe though. I did have a chance to inspect it a little more closely last night. And thus far, the closer I inspect it the more pleased I am with it. It certainly appears to be in pretty good condition under superficial inspection. A lathe this nice for $302 isn't bad. Of course until I actually get it fired up I need to brace for a possible disastrous discovery somewhere down the road. It could still have some major problem that simply isn't visible.

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"Ford Dextron 2" was on a label on the newer W&S lathes I ran.

Now, it probably was the hydraulic preselect version (we had both), if GAHR is recommending it for your vintage, I say go for it.

As I understand it, the clutch packs were the same, just hydraulically actuated in the later versions.

digger doug said:

"Ford Dextron 2" was on a label on the newer W&S lathes I ran.

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-Just a quick point: Ford Dexron is kind of a contradiction in terms. Kind of like saying a Ford Corvette, or a Chevy Mustang.

Up until relatively recently, Ford used "Type F" ATF, while almost everyone else used Dexron/Mercon. They're not interchangeable, and I'm told that using one in the other will eventually ruin it.

Bill at Small Tools didn't specify, but really, "Type F" is the outlier, with Dexron/Mercon being FAR more widely used.

ATF 4 is too new, and supposedly too "slippery".

Doc.

DocsMachine said:

-Just a quick point: Ford Dexron is kind of a contradiction in terms. Kind of like saying a Ford Corvette, or a Chevy Mustang.

Up until relatively recently, Ford used "Type F" ATF, while almost everyone else used Dexron/Mercon. They're not interchangeable, and I'm told that using one in the other will eventually ruin it.

Bill at Small Tools didn't specify, but really, "Type F" is the outlier, with Dexron/Mercon being FAR more widely used.

ATF 4 is too new, and supposedly too "slippery".

Doc.

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Tangent but DEXRON was mixed with coolant in the famous GM DEX-COOL that turned to stone in the coolant passages when neglected.

Transmission fluid, mixed with coolant... what could go wrong.

DocsMachine said:

-Just a quick point: Ford Dexron is kind of a contradiction in terms. Kind of like saying a Ford Corvette, or a Chevy Mustang.

Up until relatively recently, Ford used "Type F" ATF, while almost everyone else used Dexron/Mercon. They're not interchangeable, and I'm told that using one in the other will eventually ruin it.

Bill at Small Tools didn't specify, but really, "Type F" is the outlier, with Dexron/Mercon being FAR more widely used.

ATF 4 is too new, and supposedly too "slippery".

Doc.

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This is getting complicated now. I'd to put the wrong fluid in it and ruin it before I even get started.

I haven't drained out the original oil yet. It might be a while before I get to that point. What I'm going to do is buy a brand new plastic bucket just for this job. I don't think I have any decent clean buckets laying around that I'm not already using for other things like holding clean water, etc.

In any case, I'll drain the oil into that new clean bucket and inspect it, smell it, get intimate with it, and if it seems to be in fair shape I'll just run it through a filter and put it back in. If it seems too rank, only then will I consider replacing it with Dexron/Mercon.

I also I want to see if this original stuff even looks like transmission fluid at all? I guess I could just stick my finger into the reservoir for a quick test.

Let, me run out and try that right now, don't go anywhere because I know you're reading this as I type,...

Ok, I'm back, sorry to make you wait.

Looks like brand new oil to me. I'm surprised I thought it would be dirty black oil. It looks like I just stuck my finger into a brand new can of oil. I driped some of it onto the white lathe and the drop look perfectly clean. You can see the white lathe through the drop of oil. Feels like oil too. It's not thin or runny neither is it real thick. It actually feels and looks more like 10w_30 motor oil than transmission fluid.

In any case, when I drain it out if the whole bucket looks that good I'll just put it right back in again through a filter to be sure I don't introduce any dirt. It is possible that there could be sludge of filings in the bottom of the reservoir, but at the top where I could reach it with my finger it looks like brand new oil.

I don't see a need to replace it if it's in that good of shape. Unless it somehow lost it's original viscosity. But usually an oil starts looking dirty by then. It could be that whoever owned this lathe before just keep the oil changed. Or maybe didn't use it all that much.

I'm kind of wondering why this lathe is painted white? It appears to be the original color because it's white inside the gearbox access caps, and all the panels that open, etc. It looks like it might have come that way from the factory?

I'm wondering if this might have been from some sort of scientific research facility, or some kind of medical institution? Typically places like that would more than likely have a general purpose engine lathe for doing odd jobs. But maybe they needed a lathe they could set up to make a specific part for their experiments. I used to work in R&D and I know that in some situations we needed hundreds of "test parts" that we could destroy under different conditions. So we often had the machine shop making hundreds of sample parts for us. Maybe it was used in some kind of research lab? That might explain why it doesn't appear to have much wear either.

I would expect a production lathe in a factory to have far more signs of wear and abuse than I'm seeing on this machine. I have to say that I'm really surprised to not see any serious signs of wear on this machine. I was actually kind of expecting that it would be pretty worn out especially for $302. But it isn't showing signs of that.

I think I might have gotten a winner here.

The low price might have simply been because it is indeed a turret lathe, with no quick change gearbox, nor compound rest, etc. Most people simply don't want this type of lathe.

It shows too. Look on HGR. They have some Engine Lathes on their site right now they are asking $1000 or more for that are clearly worn into the ground. Some even have missing parts.

I'm happy with my find here.

It may not be an engine lathe, but it seems to be a really nice turret lathe.

Sweet Dreamer said:

In any case, I'll drain the oil into that new clean bucket and inspect it, smell it, get intimate with it, and if it seems to be in fair shape I'll just run it through a filter and put it back in.

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-And that's perfectly acceptable. Unlike engine oil, this stuff isn't exposed to combustion products, unburnt fuel, condensation from constant temperature changes, etc. Really, unless a bearing goes out or something and contaminated the oil- at which point you have more problems than just the kind of oil - it'll last a good long while.

The stuff I pulled out of mine was perfectly clean- I, too, saved it in a clean plastic bucket, just in case. Really, the only reason I changed it was simply peace of mind. I wanted to drain and inspect the oil and sump, and I wanted to know how old the oil was.

In my big Springfield lathe, there's every possibility the oil I originally pulled out of there was 30-40 years old. And I could have left it in there.

I also I want to see if this original stuff even looks like transmission fluid at all?

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-I have no idea when the company started "officially" changing over. Very rough guess I'd say the sixties, but that's blind stab. Up 'til then, they used ISO 46 hydraulic or "turbine" oil.

Have you found out when it was made? John O. should be able to look up the serial number for you. Chances are whoever officially had it last, had it on a maintenance schedule that dated back to the original oils. ATF is recommended now, but that's not necessarily what's always been recommended.

And don't stress too much over it. If the old oil is clean, reuse it. I'd recommend changing at it some point, but it's not like you have to do it right away.

I'm kind of wondering why this lathe is painted white?

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-That just happened to be the convention of whoever owned it last. And there's no rhyme or reason- they may have thought white would be easier to clean, some factories have colored "areas" and all the machines in that section are painted the same color, the last buyer may have had a couple cans of white left over and the old paint looked shabby, who knows?

On mine, the original paint was a darkish grey lacquer, and I suspect that was a pretty standard factory color. (And of course during WW2, everything machine-tool related was painted an industrial grey.)

And if you look around- especially on eBay- you'll see 'em painted just about any color. Light blue, dark blue, light green, forest green, red, a dozen shades of grey, white, tan...

It appears to be the original color because it's white inside the gearbox access caps, and all the panels that open, etc. It looks like it might have come that way from the factory?

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-Don't think so. Mine has the same white (or stained once-white, anyway) on the interior pieces. I suspect that's a sort of 'sealer' paint, that maybe keeps too much oil from soaking into the cast iron, or to keep any flecks from sifting off the iron into the oil, etc.

I would expect a production lathe in a factory to have far more signs of wear and abuse than I'm seeing on this machine. I have to say that I'm really surprised to not see any serious signs of wear on this machine.

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-I have every reason to believe mine has seen many tens of thousands of hours' use, but similarly, shows only minimal wear. That's mainly because W&S made a world-class product. They built them to last, and to survive eight hour shifts, often three shifts a day, and often seven days a week. I've been pretty thoroughly into mine, and I've been often amazed at the level of thought and attention they put into making it last as long as possible.

As I mentioned before, Messrs. Warner and Swasey did not truck with the concept of "planned obsolescence". They didn't make a machine that was pretty good, but needed to be replaced after five years. They built machines to LAST.

Mine was made in 1939, and thus almost certainly pushed through the war cranking three shifts a day. And yet, the worst wear it has- anywhere- is a slight hollow on the front way of the bed, where the "carriage" typically rides.

The low price might have simply been because [snip] Most people simply don't want this type of lathe.

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-That's exactly it. They're excellent at what they do, but nobody needs them to do that anymore, and they really can't easily be converted to anything else.

There's still many places that use these things, at least on an occasional basis, but literally millions of them were made. Mine, as I said, was made in '39, and has a serial number close to half a million.

Factories once had hundreds of these, cranking out tens of thousands of parts a shift. Today, the same factory can produce more, faster and more accurately with modern bar-fed turning centers. There's a huge supply of the machines, and no one wants them. So they either get sold to guys like you or me for pennies on the dollar, or they get scrapped.

Doc.