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First Lathe: 1942 Monarch 14C

Does it have the lead screw reverse on the apron or just the headstock? The tel-tale "hump" on the top of the feed gears doesn't seem to be there is why I ask!
My 12ckk has leadscrew reverse on headstock only. The rod and apron levers for leadscrew reverse are for "toolroom" lathes. Mine is not, though it did come with taper attachment.
 
Just noticed this weekend that the tailstock quill has two opposed bolts/pins missing that seem to be for clamping the tang of MT tooling tight.

Is it me or are these oddball thread sizes? If anyone knows what they are supposed to be size/thread- wise I would be interested in hearing as I guess they will need to be made!
 
Just noticed this weekend that the tailstock quill has two opposed bolts/pins missing that seem to be for clamping the tang of MT tooling tight.

Is it me or are these oddball thread sizes? If anyone knows what they are supposed to be size/thread- wise I would be interested in hearing as I guess they will need to be made!

On my 10EE the thread in the quill was incomplete so that the bolt/pins would bottom out and be stuck. They aren't supposed to move but be just a little more apart then the tang thichness to act as a rotation stop.

Mine were beat up pretty good so I made some replacements using A2 tool steel.
 
Just noticed this weekend that the tailstock quill has two opposed bolts/pins missing that seem to be for clamping the tang of MT tooling tight.

Is it me or are these oddball thread sizes? If anyone knows what they are supposed to be size/thread- wise I would be interested in hearing as I guess they will need to be made!
When I worked as a quality engineer, we had a material that could be used to make a castings of thread and other internal features. You would fill half of the thread, let it harden for a few minutes, then pop the casting out and measure the thread form/pitch/whatever on the optical comparator. Flexbar makes the stuff, and I imagine that there are other sources. Dentists use something similar for making dental impressions.
 
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Kevin seems unlikely they'd be odd threads. About what size are they? Measure the minor diameter and look at a tap drill chart might give you an idea. Screw a wooden dowel into the hole for pitch.

Greg
 
On my 10EE the thread in the quill was incomplete so that the bolt/pins would bottom out and be stuck. They aren't supposed to move but be just a little more apart then the tang thichness to act as a rotation stop.

Mine were beat up pretty good so I made some replacements using A2 tool steel.
I might be off but it seems to be 11/16-16... I need to clean them out better and do another measurement... They are full of all kinds of crap so there clearly wasn't anything in there for a long time. I have some 4140 I could make them from.
 
Turns out I lied a bit... this lathe does have an "electrical" spindle reverse. Was staring me in the face the entire time. Have been doing some research on reversing contactors and running the actual on/off switches on a 24V circuit. Was going through the wiring in the switch trying to trace it all back when I realized the deadman switch is actually double throw... handle in the middle and it's off handle up and it is one direction, handle down and it is the other... oh well. This set-up isn't particularly user friendly so I'm still going to go ahead and change it over to a reversing contactor. I also have an NOS switch from the same era that is a perfect fit for this application! I'll do some more searching here and see if there is a good thread on wiring up a reversing contactor, so I can start mentally putting together an inventory list...

The "reversing" switch:

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The control station I'm planning on using...

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More tailstock fun and games time.... Was wondering if there is a trick to getting the end "bell" off the back of the tailstock on these C types? It looks like it is probably threaded on and the telltale hole with the chipping around it at the bottom of it looks like evidence of a pin spanner hole that received its usual level of abuse over 80 or so years, but that is just a guess.

Thought I would ask if I'm missing something before I lean on it any as it clearly is going to be pain to get off. The hole does seem to go up into the shaft itself is my only other hesitation, though it is hard to tell given the size of the hole. If it is a standard RH thread I'll give a strap wrench a go and see how much of a fight it puts up...

A plus is the rear bronze bushing in the "bell" still looks like it is a very nice fit on the shaft with zero slop, although there is a small amount of axial slop in the mechanism itself.

Also, interestingly, the felt "way wiper" retainer around the tailstock quill itself turns out to be cast iron. I had thought all of them on the machine were cast aluminum. Also had some strange coating on the inside between the felt and the ring itself. Almost looked like a very thick primer, but was hard to tell it was so ancient.
 
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Yep. Simply unscrew it. Standard right hand thread. Just had one apart on a lathe I have been touching up and replaced the thrust bearing a couple weeks ago.
Thanks Mike. Gave the strap wrench a try once you confirmed it's threaded on there, but no go... its on there tight and the shape made the strap slip off once a certain amount of torque was on it. Mark may actually have a 4" pin spanner wrench that I can borrow to get it off though. Probably going to need to buy a set of those wrenches as Monarch seems enamored with them!

KT
 
Kevin someone may have loctited this. Who knows? Once you get a spanner that won't slip apply some heat to the tailsock casting, not the nut part. I think 400* will do it and won't hurt anything. Once it's hot shock the nut with a piece of brass and a good size hammer. Then try the spanner. You might try shocking the nut when its cold first.

Good luck.

Greg
 
Hi all. I've ended up with my first lathe. I brought home a 1942 Monarch 14C and it is possibly the dirtiest thing ever conceived in the universe -- looks like it was just brought up from the back deck of the Bismarck by that Ballard guy -- but under all the grime and not insignificant amount of rust lurks a pretty nice Machine, I hope. It was a Navy girl from the beginning. Bought by the Navy for the tool and die making shop at the Hunter's Point Naval shipyard and when one of the tool and die makers there retired he asked to have the machine... apparently a few years later it showed up on the back of a flatbed truck and was moved into the basement garage of a house in San Francisco where it sat until I moved it to my garage. The last 15 years or so it sat unused and covered in swarf. A majority of the rust on it turned out to be just the chips rusting down to dust, but there are some spots on the ways that are going to need some careful attention.

I've been taking machine shop classes for fun at night for a few years so while I'm no machinist, I do have a pretty decent understating of what I'm doing, so I'm looking forward to getting this thig back up and running. It's going to be an effort though as it is really, really dirty. The biggest issue is that I haven't had a chance to run it as the circuit it was on back in the POs place had been hijacked for something else and where it is in my garage I have yet to get power to. I manually ran it through all the gears, so I know they all turn, but have yet to be able to do a full assessment. I felt for the $$ the risk was worth it. Also came with a selection of tooling and bits, but is missing some key stuff like its original collet chucks and both the steady and follow rests so I will be on the lookout for those. The covers for the taper attachment also went MIA somewhere in the past 8 decades.
I too have a couple of Monarchs out of Hunters point, The oldest is a CBB model, all of mine that came from hunters point have the same US. navy stamp on the ways just past and above the model/serial number. You have to look to see it. Personally, some of the best lathes ever made.
 

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Yep. Simply unscrew it. Standard right hand thread. Just had one apart on a lathe I have been touching up and replaced the thrust bearing a couple weeks ago.
Kevin someone may have loctited this. Who knows? Once you get a spanner that won't slip apply some heat to the tailsock casting, not the nut part. I think 400* will do it and won't hurt anything. Once it's hot shock the nut with a piece of brass and a good size hammer. Then try the spanner. You might try shocking the nut when its cold first.

Good luck.

Greg

It worked, I took the suggestion of giving it a proper hit as inspiration to find where I hid my copper hammer from myself and once I found it I gave it a few smacks. Then made a close fitting dowel out of some drill rod and tapped on that directly next to the hole. Once it started to rotate it came right off. Not as much rust as I was expecting, but some.

There appears to be no way for oil to get to the bronze (?) end bearing, but it is in excellent condition, so I assume it doesn't really matter in this application. Some neat detail though as the spanner hole doubles as a "drain" so the air doesn't compress behind the quill or extra oil/coolant has somewhere to drain out.

There was zero axial play which surprised me as there is definitely play in the mechanism itself when everything is done up and the hand wheel is on. The only place that could come from is if the thrust bearing has play behind it on the shaft. The screw itself had some lateral play once the bell was off, but I would sort of expect that given the nut isn't very long.

The "tip" of the shaft is bent though (and mushroomed a bit, so I'll have to figure out how to bend that back without making anything worse as the threads themselves seem to be in great condition. Not sure how someone would have bent that unless they were using the tailstock as in impromptu press with an ill fitting taper....

Given there were a few splotches of paint on this I assume these were originally painted vs being just polished? I may powder coat it given the high wear area it resides in (apparently)!

I cleaned all the gunk off it and de-rusted it and put everything back together for now. I mainly wanted to make sure there wasn't any water sitting in there from the trip to my garage when it was moved.
 

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Another point of concern was the lead screw reverse handle.... My understanding was it operated in some pretty well defined Fwd/neutral/rev detents. Mine - for lack of a better description - felt 'mushy' at best with little to delineate between any of the modes. I took the cover off to see if there was anything obviously amiss, but other than the "cam" nearest the end of the shaft under the cover looking a bit chowdered up, I can't see anything obviously amiss. If anyone has any experience with these and sees anything I might be missing please let me know! Interestingly enough once the cover was off the action of the handle seemed to improve. I did rotate the spindle by hand for a few minutes to see if I could see anything that might be wrong, so that may have had something to do with it, but it makes me wonder if the bronze bushing that is obviously worn in the cover plate is causing it some issues. Anyway, any thought would be appreciated.
 

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Also, does anyone know how this plate comes off? The handle came off with little effort and the three screws in the top would lead me to believe it was meant to be removed via undoing those, but it doesn't want to budge. I don't have a manual that shows a good exploded parts diagram for this particular configuration (still need to get one from Monarch), so I din't use much force. I tapped on the alternate ends with a brass drift trying to rotate it a bit around the shaft, but didn't get anywhere so figured I would ask before causing myself more trouble than needed. The shaft has a significant amount of axial play (1/4" to 1/2" ballpark) in it which will make getting the handle back on and the taper pin in interesting.

I want to get it off to inspect it (and clean) given that it doesn't shift between the E/D/C settings very easily at all, but after getting the handle off realized that the problem might be in the handle itself as it was brazed at some point after taking a hit. A nice job, but still might be off a bit as a result. Luckily, thanks to Greg, I have a spare of this exact handle! :)


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Also realized, belatedly, that the main cross feed handle took a pretty good hit at some point in the past. Not sure how I missed that before and don't have a spare of that one. lol So, if you happen to have one (or the handwheel version like on the micro-gauging dial) please reach out!


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I too have a couple of Monarchs out of Hunters point, The oldest is a CBB model, all of mine that came from hunters point have the same US. navy stamp on the ways just past and above the model/serial number. You have to look to see it. Personally, some of the best lathes ever made.
Very cool. I'll have to take a closer look. I found the painted on Navy markings on the end of the lathe under the top coat of paint when I was blasting it off. Was able to read some of it which was cool. The spot where the Navy tag was taken off the headstock is still visible too, so I'll have to see what is on the ways. I have only gotten the worst of the dirt and rust off them so they are in no way clean yet though...
 
I too have a couple of Monarchs out of Hunters point, The oldest is a CBB model, all of mine that came from hunters point have the same US. navy stamp on the ways just past and above the model/serial number. You have to look to see it. Personally, some of the best lathes ever made.
Found it. Very cool.

USN Badge.jpg
 
Also, does anyone know how this plate comes off? The handle came off with little effort and the three screws in the top would lead me to believe it was meant to be removed via undoing those, but it doesn't want to budge. I don't have a manual that shows a good exploded parts diagram for this particular configuration (still need to get one from Monarch), so I din't use much force. I tapped on the alternate ends with a brass drift trying to rotate it a bit around the shaft, but didn't get anywhere so figured I would ask before causing myself more trouble than needed. The shaft has a significant amount of axial play (1/4" to 1/2" ballpark) in it which will make getting the handle back on and the taper pin in interesting.

I want to get it off to inspect it (and clean) given that it doesn't shift between the E/D/C settings very easily at all, but after getting the handle off realized that the problem might be in the handle itself as it was brazed at some point after taking a hit. A nice job, but still might be off a bit as a result. Luckily, thanks to Greg, I have a spare of this exact handle! :)


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Also realized, belatedly, that the main cross feed handle took a pretty good hit at some point in the past. Not sure how I missed that before and don't have a spare of that one. lol So, if you happen to have one (or the handwheel version like on the micro-gauging dial) please reach out!


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Just a bump on this item... planning to work on it today, so if anyone has taken this cover plate off I would be interested in how you did it!

Thanks!
 
Gave this plate another try today. I was able to work a thin metal putty knife in between the plate and the top of the QCTB as someone suggested it might be locktighted on there... was able to get the putty knife in all the way around it, so it's clearly not stuck on there with gasket gunk, but the knife did get hung up about 1/2" in from the edge between the front two screw holes. It felt like some kind of a round pin (maybe locating pin?), but otherwise wouldn't budge. I'm going to leave well enough alone though and just move on. If/when I take the QCTB off to give it a proper clean, I'll try and get a look at it from underneath. The bolt through the front of the casting just under the plate seems to be one of the attachment points for the QCTB itself so don't think that is involved in any way.

One interesting thing... I gave the top plate a pretty thorough scrub down to make sure I wasn't missing anything under some of the gunk and old paint and noticed that when I got it all cleaned up the plate looked like it was originally flaked! The only paint on it was from the second slopped-on coat, so it may have come that way from the factory which is cool. A little bling even a few months after the war started... :)

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Another interesting thing is that the info plates on the headstock are all brass, but this speeds and feeds plate is actually aluminum or some similar alloy. I know they switched over from brass to aluminum plates sometime during the war, so it may have started around when this lathe was going though final fitting. The pate is in pretty good condition too... not all trashed to hell like a lot I see on ebay are, so it gives me hope there is a nice lathe under the grunge!


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Metric threading?

Was a metric threading change gear originally offered on these C types (with an associated speeds and feeds plate)?

Just occurred to me to ask as I don't remember ever reading anything in any of the Monarch documentation I've read through....
 








 
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