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And with my old machinery, there is the problem of .050" of backlash.

.....and when building a piece from scratch it is nice to pre program the numbers in and start hogging without thinking.

My dials are adjustable. I just loosen a set screw and spin the dial to zero- same thing on the tailstock and main screw.

Mine are like Dennis's. I can adjust them both. I still haven't been told how you can watch the DRO and disengage your half nut and back out your cross slide. Those lights blink to fast for me to do it. I have DROs on both of my mills, but haven't seen a need on the lathe.
You would love threading on my Monarch 10EE with ELSR. Your cross slide knobs have adjustable stops. When you bring it back out at the end of the thread it hits the stop, when you are ready to make the next pass you run the cross slide in and it stops at what ever you had it set for. No looking necessary. The ELSR stops threading at your preconceived stop and instantly stops the chuck. Pull your cross slide back, hit the ESLR lever and the carriage fast feeds back to your preset stop. Dial your cross slide back to the stop and crank your compound and make another pass. You do not have to fool with the half nut.

That makes sense then. The dials are not adjustable on my old South Bend, hence the sharpie mark.

Butch, that sounds like a sweet setup on that Monarch lathe. Does yours have capability to instantly reverse the chuck? I saw a neat video of a threading tool on a horizontal pivot, so it could be reversed back through the threads without moving the cross slide, the tool just lifted up to ride on top in reverse. The lathe in the video was set up to instantly reverse at the end of the threads, don't know what it was though.

dam if that wouldn't be a nice to have on your lathe

The ELSR does instantly stop both the carriage and chuck. I do back out the tool manually and the ELSR quick travels back. I have seen a tool like you have mentioned though.

Butch, how do carbide inserts like to be stopped like that? Any breakage?

I do not use carbide. I use Warner HSS inserts.

Found a Clausing Colchester 13x36 early 60's close by. It's been sitting inside mostly unused for over five years.

Dirty and greasy but no rust. It's a 440VAC 3 phase 5hp machine. Has a full set of collets but no collet chuck, three jaw, four jaw chuck, follow and steady rest, QCTP, etc. I haven't clocked it but did put the scope on it and it sounds like an old Singer.

Haven't got a price on it as the owner is out of pocket until who knows when. I do know he inherited it and has no interest in it. He lives many miles away and wants to sell.

So...I'm thinking this might be a "barn find" and I might pick it for cheap. It has never been advertised.

Thoughts?

Clausing makes a great machine, its really hard to harm one,
I wouldn't have second thoughts buying it.

I bought a 1967 Clausing 5914 at auction in 2002.
It was 440 VAC 3 phase.
I was rewiring the motor to be 220 3 phase by following the diagram inside the motor. I was upside down and dirty all over, when I realized that to swap any two wires of 3 phase would be to reverse direction of the motor.

A smart 6 year old could have figured that out in a second, but it took me until age 51 to figure out how to make a 3 phase motor go into reverse.

Spanokopitas
If in decent shape, it should make you a fine machine.

Was a new maintenance manager at a plant and inherited an electrician. She tells me that the reason the conveyor they just put in a new motor was running backwards was because the fuses were in upside down. Totally serious. She didn't work for me very long.

I did figure out on my own at age 38 that 3 phases each rectified into hypersines, that are each converted by 3 fixed pulse width discontinuous flybacks, will be a system with perfect power factor and constant power draw. I am not the only one to figure that out. You want to draw power as the square of the Voltage? Just go topology shopping, and the discontinuous flyback works.

Go with the Clausing, should be able to change the leads in the motor to 220v if you don't have a 440v service.

Checked the motor out yesterday. It is 220 3phase, not 440 so I'm good to go. I will need another phase converter because my present unit won't handle 5hp.

The price is, "Somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000". The owner is still on vacation.

I bought 5 Summits 10 years back and they have proven to be unbreakable. Have 10th and 11th graders that can tear up an anvil with a feather using them.

lol I use the same saying all the time except I insert a " rubber mallet " instead of a feather.

FYI: I have a Grizzly 12x36 that I bought brand new. It is a Model 1001.

My big bitch with it is that it was in some respects like the one that someone pictured. To go from the "high" range of speeds to the "low" range of speeds you had to pull the end cover off, remove a bolt, and turn a gear over about the size of a small dinner plate, and then engage a quadrant gear differently. Too much of a PIA for me. I was very disappointed.
Think: Drill a big hole, drill a little hole. Face something big, and then get it down to 3 inches. A PIA....

My correction to this was to buy a phase converter, a 3 phase motor, and put a different pulley on the input shaft. I can now run it dead slow to thread. Before this it's slowest speed was something like 70 RPM. I hated to do coarse threads on it. I now do wrinkle paint stock jobs at about 4RPMs, and fly rod guides the same way.

My first lathe, was a 12x36 Atlas. I bought it new, and figured out how to set it up myself. I had never run a lathe until I bought it. I taught myself threading, setups, etc., by reading books and figuring things out. If I'd started at 70RPM learning to cut threads rather than 28 I'd still be down there busting things up. I had read books for years, and thought a lot.

My lathe is essentially the cheapest Grizzly Gunsmith's lathe with enhancements. They put a switch on the apron, and lengthened the bed to 40 inches. If you are looking at the cheapest of the Grizzly gunsmithing lathes you might check some of these things out. I got a taper attachment with mine and would want one.

I also wish I presently had a milling attachment. I am getting to the point where old age and poverty is preventing me from doing more work. I chamber through the headstock mostly, and would mount a good floating reamer holder in that. If you had a DRO you could also use it then to move your carriage back-and- forth to add and gauge any chambering depth. You would still want to use your depth mike against your headspace gauges, but it would make things much quicker. You would still have to watch for flex, deflection, work hardening, etc. Experience with YOUR equipment would teach you that if you weren't too dumb to learn from it.

I might have missed something in my thoughts, but I am certain that someone here will square me away. Oh, I also use one of Greg Tannels' muzzle flushers when I chamber through the headstock. I use a Bald Eagle floating holder. I got mine from the guy who invented it, about the time he did so.

Just brainstorming for you. Hope it helps. Hope others pitch in that have experience. If I suffered some type of brain lock forgive me.

I started with books, a few brains, and common sense. I learned a lot along the way.