Set up on a lathe for drilling out broken bolts

[Frank S]

My welder mechanic neighbor dropped off a part he had tried to remove a couple of broken bolts in with a torch. He said he had first tried drilling them out, but his drill bits were no match for the hardened bolts, so he decided to do something he has seen me do by burning them out with his torch. People really shouldn't watch me do this and then think they will be able to do it themselves from only witnessing it done once. Maybe I got lucky that one time or I was burning out a hollow dutchman of a broken off pipe fitting or maybe I already had a hole drilled through the bolt.
Anyway he had already created the damage and just needed the bolts out so First I tried to mount the part in my mill but the head on the Enco table mill could not be centered over the holes due to the shape of the part. SO I looked to one of my LeBlond lathes the one I have used to line bore bearing locations with in the past. Again no go, I could clamp the part on the compound with the tool post removed but there was no way to make a second clamping point. Then I looked at my Sheldon 12" and sure enough the Sheldon is made for stuff like this. it has a T slot cut all the way along the center of the top of the cross slide. By removing the tool post and using a 5/8 18 all thread rod in the base for the tool post I was able to use the holes in the part to clamp it down, then with one of the flange nut T nuts I made in the past and one of my 1 1/2" tramming riser blocks I removed the tramming sleeve and bolted it down to the cross slide then C clamped the part to that using soome washers as spacers to get the correct height to the center of the spindle

the part was through drilled which made it easy to align it for drilling



By relocating to the other hole in the part I was able to center up on the second bolt


I have one other lathe that is well over 100 years old still runs great but currently just a dust catcher sine I'm not using it but in looking at the carriage of it today I noticed something I had forgotten the compound and the top of the cross slide can be removed in just a few minutes leaving a milled flat carriage top surface with 4 T slots for mounting fixtures in maybe I need to re think letting it just gather dirt because it Has Frank's special tools written all over it