I am brand new to the southbendlathe group. I acquired my first, a 9" C with a 48" bed, about a year ago from CNC company. It took about 2 months for them to ship it and another 2 months to get them to send me a back drive set up to replace the under drive motor
mount
and pulley set they shipped me. I notice in one of the many Al
Babin
posts that CNC Company is a Babin affiliate. I hadn't connected
the
two.
This lathe is up and running and I have been having fun with it. I have been a fountain pen collector for about 20 years. I started repairing them about 15 years ago and have been making them for
about
3 years. I'm not building the kits, I make them from scratch. The triple lead threads common on caps and barrels of quality pens are what got me going on the South Bend path.
The C I bought didn't come with change gears except what was
mounted
on the lathe. I bought a stack of change gears on E-bay from a guy
in
Pittsburg. He said they were from a 1927 9" SB. When I got them
and
tried them on the lathe they were the wrong size. The hole
diameter
was too big and the teeth were too far apart. Dam#*. The guy
didn't
want the gears back so I still have them. I'll post the dimensions tooth count etc. Maybe someone here can use them.
I decided that what I really needed was an A with a quick change
gear
box. I found one on E-bay in Woodstock Illinois. I live in
Palatine
Illinois so it was only a 40 minute drive to pick it up. I bid at the last second $750 and Dam#*, it sold for $751. I got an E-mail from the seller later that day. He said the sister of the lathe I didn't win was available for the price of my last bid. I drove out and looked at it. It was pretty beat up, but I figured the money
I'd
save on shipping would help justify the cost. Charlotte N. Cole charged me $360 for shipping my C from Connecticut.
So I got it home and into the basement, next to the C. It had a missing tooth on the bull gear, soooo... I am back on E-bay looking for a bull gear. There is a guy who is selling a stack of change gears and a bull gear among a huge list of other SB stuff. The listings have a BUY IT NOW price. I E-mailed him, KuhlRD@n... and asked him specifics about the dimensions of the change gears. Fool me once...... The answer was satisfactory so I bought the
change
gears and the bull gear. This was in December. In Februrary I
still
didn't have my parts. I couldn't find this Kris Kuhl. E-bay suspended him the day after I sent my check so there was no way to even complain to E-bay about it. I found a phone number for a Kuhl in Hartford. The address matched the address where I had sent the money. A woman answers and doesn't know anything about the whereabouts of her step-son. Dam#*.
Yahoo auctions has a new seller. The prices are starting dirt cheap. The pictures are great. He has a bull gear. I didn't
expect
to get satisfaction from Kris Kuhl. I bid on the bull gear. Some
of
the auctions have a buy it now price, so I E-mailed the guy (by now you are ahead of me) at EZEETOOL.yahoo.com. I asked him how much
it
would take for him to stop the auction. He told me $45. I upped
my
bid to that amount and E-mailed him asking him to stop the
auction.
His response was "I have 5 of them. I sent him the money for the bull gear and three other items I bought with the "buy it" price. This was in February. I was still trying to get satisfaction from Kris Kuhl. Then I noticed the geographical proximity of Hartford
and
Bristol. I printed out the E-bay bull gear listing and the Yahoo bull gear listing. Dam#*. They sold me the same part twice.
I finally got Kris's father on the phone. I told him that if I didn't hear from Kris that day I was going to give the pictures of the bull gears to the police. He called in 10 minutes and told me the change gears and the bull gear would go out the next day.
Three
weeks later I finally did get them. They were sent parcel post
which
took 10 days from the postmark date.
Meanwhile, I was steaming mad at Ezeetool. I left him his first feedback on Yahoo which accused him of fraud and asked him how long he thought he would last on Yahoo. I called him on the phone(he
had
been "out of town" for a couple of weeks). He said he wholesaled parts to "these kids" and that the bull gear photo was a file photo and that a bull gear was a bull gear. He would send me the stuff I ordered if I still wanted it. I said I did. He said it would go
out
"Monday". That was in March. I got a package from him a couple of weeks later with a bunch of reamers and drill bits I had bid $5 on, the other $90 worth was not in the shipment.
In June I called the 860 number for the 20th time and reminded
"John"
that I still had the bull gear pictures and I told him that I had
the
FTC complaint form on my desk. I got a registered letter with a postal money order a couple of weeks ago.
After all that, I installed the bull gear and continued to work on the A. I found two gears in the quick change gear box have broken teeth. Dam#*. I see wwpiercing and hpassport have South Bend
