I recently re build my lathe and it had hardened ways. Honestly, just use a power grinder. I used one and it worked just fine. The key to success with a power grinder is to control the rate of material removal. I chose to use an air grinder as they weigh less and are less powerful, and I used some 80 grit sanding discs. One pass only took of 1-2 tenths. So if you have to go 2 thousands down that would be 10 or more passes. which is not bad. It took a few days and I did all the finishing work with emery disks which are even less aggressive. The important thing is control. as long as you know how much material is coming off and you have options to adjust that amount that's it.

Nice to see others scraping work. The time spent now is going to be a payoff in the end and well for many happy ending machine work projects. Nice to find your channel and subscribe. Thank you. Lance & Patrick.

Your initial idea using the bed as a guide sounds more practical as fewer things could go wrong. If those linear guides are accurate and rigid enough though, it would be awesome to see your universal bed grinder idea come to life. Grain of salt with my comment since I've never done anything like this before.

Great video! nice documentation

I think your last Idea ist the best. I want make ist so too.

Good luck and thanks for sharing! I’m embarking on a similar approach to my 12” atlas. I’ll reach out if I discover any magic tricks. Either way, your video is a helpful step to getting this done. Thanks again.

I have a very similar project. It is a Colchester Mascot 1600. It too have hardened bed ways. Mine is similar worn to yours. The difference is that the main carriage on mine has one V at the front side and and one flat way at the rear where yours have two V ways for the carriage. So mine has one flat way at the front and one flat at the rear I have done some test work, but I havent scraped, I have used a angle grinder and a 50 cm long tool I made, similar to a straight edge. I have used the angle grinder to remove bulk material and the tool together with diamond paste for finnish on the not worn and far end of the flat way where the main carriage goes. This have proved to be a time consuming job. However it also have proved to be possible to achieve an amazing accuracy within 5/1.000 mm, or 2/10.000 of an inch. I plan on bringing the two flat ways level and parallell with each other first. That will be easy measuring with straigt edge, precision level and a dial on a precision stand I have made. Next I need to make a horizontal reference edge. I plan on making this edge on the rear of the lathe, the non alligned edge wich is there today is not far from true. I plan on using a 1mm stainless steel wire loaded up to near the yeld point and run it near the edge on the rear. I can then scrape/grind this edge until it becomes absolutely parallel with my steel wire. I have made a micrometer attachment with electrical connection so I get an electric signal when my micrometer touches the steel wire. In this way I should be able to get the horizontal edge straight to within 1/100 mm My plan is then to make a support for a grinding attachment that will run on the the two flat ways and on the the horizontal edge on the rear. With this attachment I will grind the two remainin V-ways.

I have the same issue with my lathe , i lack the knowledge to no if i should just get a new one or keep moving forward on my restore . My gut is telling to stop . im about $1,000 in and its steel a 500 lb usless heap in my mind . i have a south bend heavy 10L . the kind used by gun smiths that can receive large barrels threw the chuck

You can always rent a milling machine from climax potable machine's. But park that or any lathe bed next to it zero it in .bolt it together. And grind it..my boss sent out a totally disassembled lathes .year's later I learned field service machining. Supper finishings. Some customers asked for 12 micron finish. I gave them 7 micron.😅

Those bed ways looked perfect ...😥

You’re a brave soul attempting to scrape a hardened bed. Some pretty clever ideas for getting the job done though, and they actually sound viable, unlike many similar KZfaq vids where you watch some poor misguided soul make things worse and worse due to easy access to carbide and a complete lack of any understanding of machine geometry lol.

Good afternoon friend. I'm looking for knowledge to restore my vise, I still don't know how to maintain alignment after the sweep. here in Brazil resources are minimal

wonderful work you are doing, just wondering how it is turning out......best wishes, Paul

Make sure your parallel straight edge is actually parallel, you only showed scraping one side, but both sides need to be done to get accurate measurements from it, use a micrometer to check it very carefully, also with 2 thou to go, you can be much more aggressive in scraping the ends in, IE rough scraping at first, not finish scraping.

It's real challenge to grind lathe ways. Great chance to fail them at all. BTW you shouldn't use upper face of V-ways for measurements. It's not working surface. Good luck tho'!

There are some videos here on scraping carbon steel.

I'm restoring an old shaper. How can I harden surface on cast iron after grinding?

Eu estou passando a mesma situação com minha plaina de pórticos. Construí alguns dispositivos pra fazer as guias mais precisas. Está levando muitos meses. Estou quase desistindo.

Did it work out?

why you don't using milling lathe?

thats a fun exercise, but isnt necessary for 99% of users 2 thou are nothing...but its a cool exercise and learning experience

You should acquire a surface grinder. Its journal bearing is much more accurate than your 1 HP motor. The most important part of restoration old machine is how fast and how sharp you can grind your scraping tool.

Send the bed out to be ground by professionals, scrape the carriage and headstock to match it, and NEVER flake a lathe bed!

The bed needs ground on a bed way grinder.

We is to do reconditioning of all types of machines having cast iron beds, such as lathe, milling, centerless grinder etc. by hand scrapping for more than 25 years. And also we is to restore the accuracy of C I surface plates of 3' by 9' by hand scrapping only. I am from Mumbai, India

Today October 22 2022 I was quoted $12,000 to $15,000 Canadian dollars to grind and then scrape a South Bend 13" Lathe Bed. The old girl is not worth that kind of money to resurface. I will use it as it is.

You need scraping with grinder.Russians do it a lot.Your ways are too hard for scraper

:/ Take the lathe to a professional company that can either do it for you or advise you properly or run the risk of ruining an expensive and somewhat rare lathe. If you don't fully understand how to scrape a lathe bed then you really should not tackle this sort of work. Its your lathe today and you feel like you can do what you want with it but it will not always be your lathe and its your duty to look after it until that time.

You ruined a perfectly good machine there numbnuts, good job.