N Jen, No, don't tighten up your expanders! You can damage the bearings by over-tightening these. Make up a barrel wrench like shown here (mine is a 2" x 2" hardwood handle 3 feet long with another 4"

I have a 1946 Heavy 10 aka 10L. It has bronze split bushings that encompass the spindle bearing surface. The split is oriented at the top and has an “expander” that pushes the bushing apart

Dear Niel et al, I just took a couple of shims out, 0.002" or 0.003" each side (the spindle clearance is normally very precisely set with the bolts hard tight), put the cap back on, tightened hard

To Eddie Draper, I like your idea of removing a few shims at the front bearing of the spindle to immobilize the spindle. Just for clarification, did you expand the bearing after reinstalling the

What you say is fine, Ondrej, but it nonetheless puts a big shock into the (cast iron) gear teeth. If they were steel and the same size, it might be a different matter (loosen and tighten the first

South Bend Lathe Co. recommended that a piece of wood be used against a chuck jaw or a bolt firmed fastened to a face plate and the lathe spindle turned manually in reverse while in back gear

Hi There, I think there is a slight problem with semantics here. When talking about the headstock, spindle and the bearings, one refers to the "front" or "rear" of the headstock, spindle and/or

Yes I what you do

actually, my SB9 uses one shim on each side of the headstock, so that was exactly what I was asking - can they each be a different thickness, and from the sound of it...yes. So I assume I can do the

Hi There, But you were taking the wrong point from the initial post.

Managed to get the stuck chuck off today. Gripped an offcut of 1 1/4" Whitworth hexagon in the chuck. Engaged the belt on the slowest non backgear speed, just to use the inertia to reduce shaft

That was the exact. Point I was stating

Hi There, There seems to be some misunderstanding about keeping the shim packs even. My reference is to bearings that use two shim packs on each bearing. Lathes like the Heavy Ten and larger use

wow

That reversing lever set up is one more reason I like the old wide bed Series O 9" lathes. It's just like the one (in design) used on the heavy 10. Roger

saw this today & moved it way up towards the top of my

If I didn’t live 4 hours away, this would already be in my truck :-D -Keith

If you have more wear on one bearing than, the other you can not shim them the same.I used to scrape spindle bearing in on large grinders and it would be nice to use the same shim but realistic.

Might be blasphemy, but aluminum cooking foil is about .001” thick. Steve Haskell

Hi There, 1) do you try to keep both the right and left shims at the same thickness? 2) How tight are the bolts supposed to be? 3) should the shims be the right thickness so you can torque down the