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Crescent v-14 lathe

J

John Copenhaver

Joined
Dec 17, 2013
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Location
Nantucket MA
I have come across a crescent V-14 lathe for sale and am interested if anyone has had any experience with this machine. I has a single phase 2 hp motor (I think). I believe that it dates from the 40s. It looks to be built to last forever. Any comments would be appreciated.
 
John Copenhaver said:
I have come across a crescent V-14 lathe for sale and am interested if anyone has had any experience with this machine. I has a single phase 2 hp motor (I think). I believe that it dates from the 40s. It looks to be built to last forever. Any comments would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Her is a link to the service manual: http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/224/84.pdf

It appears to have a very solid Reeves variable speed drive. If the Reeves drive is still in good condition then that would be hard to beat, but if it needs work, you are not likely to find any source for parts. I doubt that the motor is 2 HP since it is only a 14 inch spindle lathe. Of course, someone might have retrofitted it with a 2 HP motor which would be way overkill.

The negatives:

  • non-standard tailstock cup center. It might be a stubby Morse taper or it might not.
  • No Morse taper socket in spindle. It originally came with two spur drives which screwed onto the spindle, but I did not find any indication of the thread size. Most certainly not something that would correspond to today's lathes.
  • Just looking at the mechanical layout drawings, I would guess that the minimum speed is rather high, but tolerable for most small things like spindles for furniture.
Should you get it? It is up to you. I wouldn't, but that is just me. If you like rebuilding old machinery for the fun of it then maybe it would keep you occupied for quite a while. Would you be OK with a lathe that might not be able to use chucks and Morse taper drives that work with 99.999% of other lathes. There are a few dealers who will make custom adapters.
 
The other consideration is the odd 1-1/8 x 10tpi thread on the spindle. You will need a spindle adapter made to suit the lathe.
 
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