vtsteam - I've been looking at some of your stuff - especially the Gingery lathe. Ironically, I got interested in foundry work because of the Gingery books - saw them many years ago and wanted them then but work and family commitments said 'No,' so I bought them a couple of years ago. Built the furnace; thought I'd skip the lathe since I already have one and start on the shaper. Made most of the patterns; just ready to start pouring and the 7B turned up. So I was going to start on the mill and discovered I'd already got one (didn't know it was a Gingery one until last year . . . )
So now I AM going to build the lathe out of spite and then I'm going to do the shaper.
What are you missing off your 7B? Are you aware of the Yahoo Atlas lathes and shaper newsgroups? The files sections have parts diagrams etc which might help you. I'll send you the links if you like? I had a huge problem (of my own making) with my 7B which involved making a new bull-gear hub but it's all OK now - nice little machine. Will post pics when I figure out how . . .
Hi Cymro, thanks for the reply -- missed it earlier. I too wanted to build the mill and shaper, but also found the shaper -- so put an end to that project, and also found an Atlas horizontal mill about 5 years ago. I may get rid of the latter, now that I have a vertical mill drill, and build the horizontal Gingery mill for fun some day -- just like you and the lathe! I can keep all the cutters, etc that I have for the Atlas horizontal.
I took a good look at the remaining box of parts I have for the Atlas shaper -- as I said it's mostly assembled. I think the only thing missing is the large gear that must go inside the drive for the table traverse. I see a small gear there that must mesh with it, and the round outer case has a lever and a catch that must push the missing bigger gear.
I think I could probably make the bigger gear if I had the dimensions.
Well, also looks like I'm missing the belt guard, but that's not critical to running the shaper. I imagine they're not cheap, so I'll make a guard myself.
Anyway thanks for the reply, and I'll be looking for your lathe project to cheer you on and answer any questions you might have. I made notes in my Gingery lathe book when I built it. There might have been a few errors I found. I built the lathe exactly per instructions. Later made some mods, but had the experience with the base model to compare changes to -- unlike many other builders who start modifying before they start the build. For me, it's helpful to build something as designed first. There wasn't actually much I wanted to change -- most of my mods were add-ons.
