# General lathe clean up



## Haus (Jan 29, 2014)

Hello turners,

I had the opportunity to pick up and older General lathe. It was made in Canada, with slow/fast controls in both English and French. It's a 160 model with variable speed on a Reeve's drive I believe it's called. Here's a picture of when I first brought it downstairs -










With removing 6 bolts and separating the belts, the 330lb weight was cut in half which made it easy to transport. You can see here a piece of plywood in front which isn't OEM. The previous owner cut into the sheet metal to fit a massive Farm Duty Baldor motor. I removed it and put in a smaller size GE motor. Here you can also see I sanded the rust off the lathe bed and removed the plywood and bolted the shelf back in where it belongs. 










Drilling on this lathe is a pleasure and it's pretty easy to work with. Here you can see the cuts in the side that were pushed back to fit the motor. I pushed them back a bit to fit the shelf. You can also see the wood glue still stuck onto the side.










I would like to get an idea of what I have here. Any other General lathe owners here? 

What would you say this used & cut up lathe would sell for in todays market? 

I've made some other changes to it and will upload more pictures later.

Best,
Haus


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## Haus (Jan 29, 2014)

Here's what I did to the side panel and shelf that were cut up. I pushed them flush into place then cut some sheet metal to cover it. I brought a tool rest into the orange store and color matched the green color.
It came out a little bit brighter than the original green but it's much better than before -








Here's a full shot of the entire lathe with repairs -








You can see there my big 3/4" drill chuck which I love using. You can also see I put 60 lbs in plates on the top, it didn't do much at all and I'll probably remove them soon because they just catch shavings. With the shelf and side repaired, it's super quiet and feels more stable.

I've since hit the replacement panels with another coat of green, blending in the bolt heads that you can see used to be silver and noticeable.

This lathe showed up on craigslist in a "free" section. It was about an hour away from where I lived. I called immediately and picked it up the next day.

The lathe came with a bunch of spare parts, many calipers, pen mandril, additional belts, different MT2 adapters, the whole lot. The guy gave me tons of wood to turn too, a very nice burl woods. He was so nice I felt bad so I gave him $100, even though he didn't ask for anything.


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## Syd Sellers (Feb 2, 2013)

Nice lathe and a real nice repair job. This one should work well for years to come....


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## firehawkmph (Apr 26, 2008)

Looks good Haus, nice job on cleaning and fixing it up. Good machine, now get to turning......
Mike Hawkins


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