Lathe Compound Slide Refinished

I received the compound slide for the lathe yesterday, and promptly (of course, after mowing the lawn and spraying herbicide all over the lawn to try and kill the weeds) set to work cleaning it up and refinishing it.

The first thing to do was to take it apart.  Yeah, you read that right.... I want to take it apart, and there are two reasons for that.  First, I want to have every part cleaned - no old grease, no rust, no dirt, no old metal flakes in there.  Second, I repainted the lathe, and it would be fairly nice if the tooling matched.  So, off I go.

Surprisingly, it only took a few minutes to have it in pieces.  I already knew the carriage (the bottom casting) for this lathe matched the right part number (L2-51).  I didn't know if the rest of it matched up.

The swivel slide (the second cast iron piece) did match up as well (L2-52).   It is separated from the carriage (L2-51) by way of the compound rest swivel (part 9-301):

I could not validate that casting as it was aluminum, and had no part number stamping.  Riding on top of the assembly is the tool post slide, part number L2-53 :

While apart, I wanted to know if the tool post slide could be replaced with something that would allow me to use the lathe as a simple mill.  It's a nice angled mechanism that keeps things in a solid state, so there is no reason why we can't :

Once I had it apart, I threw some acetone at the parts to clean the old paint off.  This took the longest chunk of time.  I had already picked up some self-etching primer from Sherman-Williams, so I masked off the surfaces that weren't painted with machine gray, and sprayed primer all over.

I used two coats of primer, and then sprayed three coats of Sherman-Williams blue.  I had used the cap that was a close match to the original blue (the cap was slightly lighter in color, but you know, that "cap indicates color" thing means it should be close enough).  Unfortunately, the final blue was more of a sky blue.  Yeah, the cap color was half way between the original blue and the color of the sky.  Still, it doesn't look too bad :

While at it, I dismantled the tool rest, the tailstock, and the headstock for the lathe, and cleaned up and painted them.  The only thing left to refinish is the lathe bed.  I can't test-fit the tools to the lathe bed, either, because I just don't have it right now - I had sent it off to a good ol' welder to braze a crack.  But, as soon as it comes back, it will be time to take the labels off the bed, strip the paint off, and refinish that, too.  Then I can put it back on, and find a milling attachment for the compound slide.  Woohoo!