[vladdy]

Just wondering if anyone here had some idea of the correct paint colour for a ? mid 30's ? South Bend lathe...
It's one of those workshop series, four foot bed, etc..pretty old but still useable for hobby stuff..only drawback for me is the headstock bearings , or lack of them, not much more than a machined bore in the casting and one bolt to squeeze it to tolerance..anyways..

The paint seems to be first black, then a beige / yellow, then green, and finally blue brushed / glopped / poured over everything...
So I'm wondering if the origional colour was black, or was black the 'primer' and the beige / yellow the origional colour??

any ideas appreciated, and no it's NOT going to be gray..pink maybe, but not gray..

the lathe itself is similar to this image

[Mcgyver]

go the practical machinist or home shop bbs forums and ask what shade of pink to paint it. and then duck. seriously though, there's a lot of old iron knowledge on those sites, although your adversion to grey might conflict with whats correct, restoratively speaking.

an old south bend's worth a least a couple new chicom lathes. nothing wrong with plain bearings either, they can be extremely, accurate and take heavy loads and are a LOT cheaper to replace that large size abec7 taper rollers is the bearing in bad shape?

keep up with the pics

[vladdy]

Well, I know the blue definitely isn't correct, not the way it was poured on..
The three other colors on there were..
first black, kinda plain and ordinary, hoefully not the origional, just primer ??
then beige / yellow, not bad I suppose, better than grey
and then green, medium dark sort of, hard to tell, might not be too bad in a hammertone green I suppose..

Got most of it apart yesterday, tossed into cans to go and get acid dipped to clean it up first, virtually no wear on any parts inside..
This one came from a local Auto Electric service shop, all it was ever used for was to clean up starter and generator commutators, they even made up a small motor driven saw mandrel to cut down the insulator between the commutator bars, took that off and tossed it into the corner..
All the images that I have found [so far] are just black and white line drawings or lithographs, didn't have color photography back in the 30's..

Even went to Canadian Tire, and the only stuff that's on sale is some kind of blue stone effect paint with white and yellow lumps, still better than grey..

[vladdy]

In case anybody is interested, origional colour is kind of a medium dark grey, the one I dislike the most...
I pulled off the threading / info tag on the side cover, and there it was..
this lathe is pretty old, I'm pretty sure mid 30's, no model number, just 9" swing, and 4 foot bed on the plate..