I have placed this restoration on a couple of other forums but wanted to share this with you.

My wife purchased a lathe for me last Christmas.  What a find.  $150 for a Powermatic 45 VS.  I checked out the unit before making the buy.  It ran, had some shakes but ran.  I didn't get any start pictures when I finally got around to restoration.  In fact I had not considered restoring it until I went out in the garage and looked at a sad little lathe that had 3 different coats of paint and had been mistreated, tool marks on every piece of the machine.  When I started the disassembly of the lathe, I found hammer marks that a previous owner had hit the different parts of the machine.  Why maybe to take it apart?  Not sure but it was in sad shape. This lathe was about to go through a transformation back to a working unit. From the picture you can see the original green for the unit.  You can also see black paint which was brushed on.  Between both of those was another darker green added to the mess.

You get a hint of the 3 layers of paint and the issues of removing them all. I could see this was going to take some time and manpower to get this unit back to original shape.  My goal was/is to make it as good as I possibly could maybe even better than original.  I have collected owners manuals, looked at other PM 45's on the internet and at members homes trying to learn about this unit.  There are so many different subtle changes from the original 1964 lathe.  The serial number holds the key as to when the lathe was made.  4-4539 was made in 1964.  The first number is the year it was made.  I have seen so many changes on these.  The housing for the head stock is different with the hinge for the cover.  If the hinge was made in 3 different parts its an early one.  If the hinge was molded with the housing its a later one.  The cover had a molded bead in the casting for later ones while the early covers were just plain.  The cup that holds the spring on the upper reeves drive is different from year to year.  Early ones just had a plate that was held by a spring clip while others had an actual cup held by a spring clip.  There's so much more I could discuss but enough for now.  I really got an education on the PM45.  From the picture you can see the cup, both reeves drives (upper and lower) drive motor shaft with a rusted out pulley (that had hammer marks).  Just a lot of cleaning, sanding, and polishing.  There were a couple of parts missing on my lathe that I set out to find.  Indexing plunger was missing yet I had the Martin 35A60 sprocket.  The key hole on the sprocket was worn badly but that could easily be fixed by welding it to a collar (sitting on top of the sprocket).  That was one of the engineering mistakes on this lathe.  The sprocket was captured between 2 collars and rotated by the key on the shaft.  If you weld the collar to the sprocket the problem goes away.  The tail stock wrench was missing along with the head stock wrench.  I was able to order all the bearings from the internet.  So every bearing, belt and worn part that was a danger to the system would be replaced. 

So I began to remove the paint and clean and clean and clean.  Did I mention cleaning? I used chemical strippers (some very powerful) to get into the paint and remove it.  I used bead blasting to get into the corners.  There were wire wheels, grinders (both hand and bench types) orbital sanders, drills and scrapers.  I went through about 4 pairs of gloves working on the lathe.

Every side of this machine was going to get stripped so I could start new. 

But it was coming together.  I have been working on this unit for 2 months in my spare time attempting to achieve my goals (lofty as they were).  Lots of labor went into this restoration. 

As I go I'm trying to repair all the problems that I find.  One was the tail stock.  It was missing the quill clamp.  In its place was a bolt with 24 TPI.  This was wrong.  The threads should be 16 TPI.  After closer examination I found that the tail stock was stripped out.  The threads were shredded down to the last 1/16 inch.  I went out and bought a heli coil repair kit, drilled out the hole, re-tapped the hole with the new tap in the kit, added some epoxy to hold the coil in place and knocked out the tang off the end of the coil. 

Then came the problem that I did not have the quill clamp.  I decided that the best way to approach this was to make my own.  Not having access to a metal lathe, I used a drill press to create a clamp.  I started out with 1/2" stock and files to create my clamp. 

The drawing above was my guide to making the quill clamp.  I attached the stock to the 1/2 chuck of my drill press, and created a "tail stock" out of hard wood clamped to my drill press table.

Moving the table up to the top and working my way down, I filed the stock down to the size necessary for the clamp.  Since it was 1/2" stock and the smallest I had to go down to was 3/8" it was easy and doable!  I screwed the clamp into the tail stock prior to making the bend.  That way I could tighten the clamp up and determine where I needed to bend the shaft and end up in line with the tail stock.  I heated the shaft and using a old 9/16" box end wrench I bent the shaft to the desired angle and then polished the clamp.  That saved me money and it resembled the original clamp. 

Then it was back to cleaning the different parts, removing all the paint, rust and tool marks.  These parts are about 1/2 way cleaned.  You can still see a green reside on almost all of them.  That just means more cleaning necessary. 

After getting all the paint off I set up the lathe just for viewing at the 1/3 way home part.  Some of the parts were polished and will be a final polishing before assembly. 

 

Just to give you a before and after shot on just one part.  The tool rest was in need of some TLC.

I took the tool rest completely apart.  Then I bead blasted the unit till the paint was gone.  Then I polished the parts and cleaned everything.  The result:

The nut was not touched YET!  Everything will be have some type of work done to it rather its cleaned, sanded, polished or painted, it will look like its new or it will be replaced (based on availability).

Every piece of the lathe will either be painted or it will be polished.  There were some alterations that I did to the machine due mostly to the design. The indexing sprocket had issues.  Even though it was "captured" between 2 different collars, it still managed to end up elongating the key.  The easiest solution was to connect the sprocket to the collar.  Welding it was the simplest idea although some told me to drill, tap and screw it to the collar.  I didn't like that idea because you would have to countersink the holes and the metal was not that thick.  So it was welding.

The person I took this to cut the collar so that the weld would fill up the void.  Care was taken not to get the sprocket too hot to make it cup.  Then when I got it home I hand filed the weld down, and used some JB Weld to fill up any additional voids.  I then sanded the JB Weld and the end result was ready for paint.  Since the original lathe had the sprocket painted, I wanted to paint it back again.

I grabbed some more parts, sanded and buffed them to a mirror finish.  The face plate is shown partially cleaned up.The wrench for the tailstock was purchased through Redmond Machinery.  The headstock wrench I made by taking a 30 mm wrench that was originally for something else and filed it open to the correct width.  Then I polished them both just around the tool area.  The handle will be painted to match the lathe.

That is some amazing work. Wow, I am a just change what needs changing and get it going kind of guy. You really are doing this up. Looking forward to seeing how it all shakes out. This will be better then any powermatic machine I have ever seen. Thanks, bob

 

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Bob Kloes
www.bobkloes.com

I am getting ready to prime the lathe.  It has come a long distance from where I started.  Hopefully I will be able to use it in the near future. 

Doug, that is an awesome description of the restoration. Man I love the commentary that goes along with the pictures. Looks like a great job. I am sure it will be a prize when you are finished. I will be watching for the finished photos and commentary.

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

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John Moody
John Moody Woodworks
http://www.johnmoodywoodworks.com

I spent time today cleaning the bed.  The rails were cleaned sanded and polished. 

On the left rail you see a clean and polished surface.  The right is yet to be finished.

 

Next came cleaning and taping for primer.  I cant begin to tell you just how many pics I have taken on this lathe.  If ever I should come to sell it, I want the next owner to know just what was done to restore this unit.  I have purchased all new bearings, belts, and replacement parts to make this the best I could do. 

You can see that I ended up replacing the tape job over the head stock.  I was torn when I attempted to turn the bed over.  The bed weighs so much, I pulled a muscle in my back. 

I had some damage to the reeves drive and needed to spend some time correcting the problem.  Previous owners must have thought that a hammer was a delicate tool and needed to apply it to many of the parts.  And that is not the only damage.I removed the damage by files, sanding and polishing using a dremel tool.

 

I am happy to report that the damage was very easy to repair and that the reeves drive works better than when I first tried it. 

But it does not take away the pain that I find more damage through out the unit.There was damage to one of the shafts (lower variable speed pulley shaft).  While it will not cause any issues with the operation of the lathe, I had it checked out by a machinist.  His answer was that the damage is over the area where the pulley is turned by a key and not a bearing.  Therefore the shaft is not in any danger of failing due to the hammer marks.  I still am looking into replacing it with a NOS. 

 

I have started to polish parts that will not be painted.  I want anything that has a smooth surface to shine if its not being painted.  An example here is the hand wheel for the tail stockAnd afterI added a handle to the wheel after the polish.  Every item that has both polished areas and painted areas will need to be taped off. 

Here's a comparison again between the before and after.  Here the motor pulley before:

Spot the pulley with all the rust.  Now you see it,

Even the factory didn't do this unit justice.  (sorry a little out of focus but you can see what I did)I cleaned up the holes using a file.

I took time to clean up the bed also.  Where the head stock mates up with the bed, I took off some of the flashing to dress up that area.  Sorry no photos on that but trust me, I made a difference.

 

Here is the picture of all the holes for the variable speed mounting bracket L104.  You can see that all the holes have been cleaned up but still needs a little more bead blasted to remove all the green.

Today I finally had the opportunity to get some primer on this machine. 

The parts are now ready for the final paint.  The bed was shot both top and bottom.

So now comes the stand which will be the beast of them all.  But with a little luck, maybe I can be ready for final paint by Saturday.

Looks like you are making good progress on it.

 

That will be an awesome looking lathe when you are finished.

 

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John Moody
John Moody Woodworks
http://www.johnmoodywoodworks.com