FILENAMES: Seneca1.jpg Seneca2.jpg Seneca3.jpg Seneca4.jpg DESCRIPTION: These are pictures of the headstock of a Seneca lathe. Posted by Jim Rozen . Jim provided the following description: ================================================================= In article <39DDF3E2.B06A8DA6@aerostich.com>, Ed Peterson wrote: > Before taking too many .250 passes with that thing MAKE SURE that you > have clean oil of the proper type getting to the headstock. 'Stars' have their spindle running in integral castiron bearings with caps and if that setup gets trashed it's boatanchor time. Actually some of them use bronze bushings in the cast iron headstock, as can be seen in the first photo below. But the caveats are well taken, indeed. Often these older lathes were run without shims under the bearing caps, and it was up to the operator to snug or slack off the bearing cap screws depending on what they were doing at the time. That's the way this 9" Seneca Falls Star lathe was when I found it: http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/Seneca1.jpg http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/Seneca2.jpg http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/Seneca3.jpg http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/Seneca4.jpg I always thought the Star machines had a very similar-looking tailstock to the Reed-Prentice machines. Wonder if there was some kind of cross-pollination going on back then? Jim