Lathe-Cincinnati Lathe and Tool

[jdleach]

I've been doodling around in my old shop lately, and have been cleaning up and doing maintenance on the lathes and mills. One of my old lathes is a 16" Cincinnati Lathe and Tool Co. cone type that we have had for 50+ years.

A photo of one exactly like it can be found at: http://www.mytractorforum.com/showthread.php?t=78247

Well, not exactly like it. The condition is somewhere between the first and second photos.

It has been a very good old girl, and was used in production for line-boring operations until about ten years ago.

Anyway, is there anybody that has info on this lathe, the company, or where I can be pointed to find out? Thanks all.

Dave

[Carld]

Damn man, that looks a lot like the old lathe I gave a friend. It came out of a shop in Lou. Ky that made piston rings and my uncle bought it in 1959 and then I got it in about 1993. It was a good old girl and I used it a lot. I have some photo's of it if anyone is interested.

[jdleach]

Thanks for the photo offer Carl, but if I want to see what mine looks like, I just unlock the shop.

One of the reasons I would like some info, is that there are a few things wrong with the lathe that I would like to rectify, such as finding the correct headstock gears. It appears that my grandfather's business partner bought the lathe without checking the gearing. The upshot is that at some point in the distant past, one or more gears were replaced with gears of differing tooth number.

Lathe will not cut any known thread I have ever seen. Feeds work fine, so we just relegated the lathe to facing and boring operations.

I have thought of eventually restoring the lathe, which would also necessitate borrowing a headstock gear cover to use as a pattern for a new one since the original cover has the bottom broken out and is missing.

[Carld]

My lathe was a WWI lathe that was rebuilt by Vonegut Machine sales in Indiana. It has no identification as to who the manufacturer was. There are casting numbers all over it and a serial number on the right end of the way.

[TGTool]

Sorry, I don't have any help on the specific machine and change gears that were originally supplied, but you should be able to figure out the generalized solution.

Change gears establish the relationship between spindle rotation and carriage movement. Carriage movement (per rotation of lead screw) is determined by the lead or threads per inch of the leadscrew. That will be only one of a small range of threads 4, 6, 8 or something, so you can check your leadscrew, then look for another make with the same lead and see what gear sets they supply. Whatever that is will work for you.

Manuals for other lathes might be more readily available, or armed with leadscrew pitch information some other user can tell you what his lathe has.

[jdleach]

I thought about calculating the gear train, but was trying to go the easy route and have someone just send me the measurements and tooth number from an existing machine. I may contact the guy on the tractor forum and arrange a visit so I can take some hi-res photos of his lathe, and gather some measurements myself.

Dave