The
Relmac lathe was the second lathe I bought off
eBay, having decided that the Lorch lathe, having
no backgearing, wasn't going to be suitable longer
term. OK, so it wasn't the greatest of choices
but it appealed to me in the way that only old
machinery does. And anyway it was cheap (£36
if I recall). Of course I knew it might be a
crock (thats the wonder of eBay) but in a rash moment I
bid on it.
Well it was a crock.. The front headstock bearing
was knackered (although I only knew that later) and the
backlash on the cross-slide was bad. And it didnt
have a top-slide - ok, call it a learning
experience. But then again, it appealed to me to
try and get this piece of forgotten British engineering
working again... This was a painful learnng
experience, documented on another page (coming soon),
but the results were worthwhile.
The Relmac came with a faceplate and a 3-jaw chuck that
was knackered, but I reground the jaws with a
die-grinder clamped to the cross slide and managed to
get it usable. I was lucky to find, on
a rummage stall at the 2008 Model Engineering
Exhibition, a 1.25" 12tpi BSW tap and die that fit the
spindle thread perfectly and allowed me to clean up the
threads in the faceplate so that it could be used.
The main problem with the Relmac was the unusual
spindle which needs a deep boss on the chuck backplate,
deeper than most available from the likes of Chronos or
RDG. So I started looking around for another
Relmac or its bigger brother the SuperRelm with chucks
or backplates to acquire.
You can see some other examples of Relmac lathes here.
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