Raglan Little John Mk.2 Bench Lathe - Post 6 - Fitting an alien steady rest (fixed steady or center rest)

1. Introduction

The fixed steady (or in other wording the steady rest) is usually optional equipment for the bench lathes. However, the steady rest could be proven quite handy for specific projects even for the bench lathe, especially in cases of processing long, thin and light materials susceptible to vibration during metalworking. Given that nor RAGLAN neither their successors at MYFORD are in business any more, steady rests (or any rests for that matter) for Raglan Little Johns are nowadays quite rare, so -in case of need- one might have to construct his own or adapt one available from the market. For our situation, it was decided that it is worthy to give it a go with the second choice, since the machining capacity in the little shop is somewhat limited and available time is precious. In this post, I will try and review in detail a serial process of fitting the alien steady rest to our Little John, productively and efficiently. The whole project is estimated to cost approximately something like 70,00 EUR or about so and no more than 10 hours of work at a quite relaxed pace. The necessary tooling and materials are: drill press, hand drill, twisted drills of various diameters, M6x1.0 taps, M6x1.0x30 mm allen bolts (hex socket and countersunk socket heads), files, a hacksaw, angle grinder (maybe) and, of course, the steady rest to be adapted. For a more precise metalworking a mill drill, or lathe milling attachments or even a milling machine is necessary. The whole project may be completed also without any milling, however, at a higher time and hand metalworking cost.

Raglan Little John Mk.2 Bench Lathe - Post 5 - Fitting an alien follower rest (travelling steady)

1. Introduction

The travelling steady (or in other wording the follower rest) is usually optional equipment for the bench lathes. However, the follower rest could be proven quite handy for specific projects even for the bench lathe, especially in cases of processing long, thin and light materials. Given that nor RAGLAN neither their successors at MYFORD are in business any more, follower rests (or any rests for that matter) for Raglan Little Johns are nowadays quite rare, so -in case of need- one might have to construct his own or adapt one available from the market. For our situation, it was decided that it is worthy to give it a go with the second choice, since the machining capacity in the little shop is somewhat limited. In this post, I will try and review in detail a serial process of fitting the alien follower rest to our Little John, productively and efficiently. The whole project is estimated to cost approximately something like 50,00 EUR or about so and no more than 5 to 6 hours of work at a quite relaxed pace. The necessary tooling and materials are: drill press, hand drill, twisted drills of various diameters, M6x1.0 taps, M6x1.0x20 mm allen bolts (hex socket and countersunk socket heads), files, a hacksaw, angle grinder (maybe) and, of course, the follow rest to be adapted. A mill drill or even a milling machine is desirable, if available, but not really necessary.

Raglan Little John Mk.2 Bench Lathe - Post 4 - Present status as since June 2011

 (Updated, Feb 2013)

This is our Raglan Little John Mk.2 Bench Lathe. Its serial number is 1617. It is presently located at the Nuclear Engineering Department of the School of Mechanical Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). Date of manufacture is unknown and may be only estimated by the serial number to approximately 1949 or 1950. The lathe and some of its accessories were internally donated to the Nuclear Engineering Department by the Physics Department of NTUA in 1999. As far as it is known, this lathe has been in NTUA's premises since the 60's or even earlier. Between the 70's and the 90's the lathe was in storage because the Physics Department decided to replace it  with more modern equipment. Presently, and after some absolutely necessary maintenance, the lathe processes  light metal or acrylic pieces and it is being taken care of by Nick P. Petropoulos.

Raglan Little John Mk.2 Bench Lathe - Post 3 - Tachometer (application)

(Updated, Jan 2013, see last section)

Following my earlier post on the matter -published April 9, 2012, I will present now the application of the tachometer for the Raglan  Little John Mk.2 Bench Lathe. The application could be quite similar for other lathes, milling machines and machinery in general, which might miss such a digital readout.

How to convert old PCs with DOS 6.22 to Network Linux ASCII Terminals

I will appreciate your input/feedback on this post, especially regarding dead links.

Maybe you are stuck with a bunch of obsolete PCs with MS DOS 6.22, which are not suitable for any Windows-like environment installation. Maybe you also need a couple or more ASCII terminals for your Linux Systems. Well, here is how you could use these PCs for this purpose(*):

Raglan Little John Mk.2 Bench Lathe - Post 2 - Tachometer (theory)

(THIS IS "THEORY". FIND "APPLICATION" IN THE POST OF MAY 2, 2012)

Josie, a member at http://www.instructables.com/, has published a very interesting article on how to use a bicycle speedometer (cycle computer) as tachometer. I will quote and/or mildly edit most of his article here, so as to give the necessary theoretical basis for applying such a cycle computer as tachometer for the Little John lathe. For those of you interested in the original text, here is Josie's link:

 http://www.instructables.com/id/Tachometer-made-from-a-bicycle-speedometer-cycloc/

So, here it goes:

Raglan Little John Mk.2 Bench Lathe - Post 1 - Rewiring

Back in December 2011, Little John friend Brian Kerridge gave everybody some pretty sound instructions regarding rewiring of this lathe. These instructions can be found at the "Files" section of the following Yahoo Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RaglanMachineTools/. For those of you, who are not members, you can have a look at his documentation here (... and Brian, forgive me for taking this liberty; please, let me know if there is any copyright conflict). 

As Brian most successfully notes, and I quote: