Doing what I have to do to make sure “tick tick tick” doesn’t go “boom!” Looks l…
Doing what I have to do to make sure “tick tick tick” doesn’t go “boom!” Looks like I had a bad bushing in the spindle pulley. Simple and cheap fix.
Final Assembly of the South Bend Steady Rest
I finally finished all of the machining for the steady rest. It’s now ready for assembly. I discover a miscalculation I made in the design of the bed clamp, which won’t require much effort to remediate. It’ll be a great addition to the lathe tooling.
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Finally finished machining the parts I needed for my 13″ South Bend steady rest.
Finally finished machining the parts I needed for my 13″ South Bend steady rest.
Source
I made a bolt. And it cost me nothing.
I made a bolt. And it cost me nothing. Except for the thousands of dollars I spent on machine tools and welders and the hour to make it. So practically free. 😉
Single point threading a 5/18-11 bolt for the steady rest.
Single point threading a 5/18-11 bolt for the steady rest. No thread relief. Tried the old “disengage the half nuts and retract the cross slide at the same time” dance for the first time. Nerve wracking.
Making a Bed Clamp for a South Bend Steady Rest
Continuing the restoration of the steady rest I bought for my 13″ South Bend lathe. I designed a bed clamp in CAD and with a block of scrap steel I machined a replacement for the missing part.
This won’t win me any awards
This won’t win me any awards, but the bed clamp for the South Bend steady rest is done! This journey of learning to be a hobby machinist is so much fun. I’ve watched enough videos of the real deal that I figured I could put some of what I gleaned to use and this is one of those results. If all goes well, I’ll have the video for this posted at my normal time tomorrow at 11:00am Eastern time. I have another on the K&T all ready to go just in case I can’t get it done. It’s amazing how long it can take to whittle 6 hours of footage (12 hours if you count the second camera) into a 20-25 minute video! Fingers crossed! 🤞🏻
Prepping the next piece to the steady rest build
I’ll get this to the overall dimensions and then finish the milling on the Bridgeport.
Making the last big piece for the steady rest for my South Bend lathe.
Making the last big piece for the steady rest for my South Bend lathe. I’ll use the shaper to get this part to size then do all of the milling on the Bridgeport. Check out my YT channel for the build videos.





