Yorkshire Bloke

**ants** · Mar 2, 2016, 06:26 AM

Hello
I'm Anthony from South Yorkshire in the North of England and have been mechanicaly active since leaving school when I became a motor mechanic and served my apprentice.
I'm no longer in that trade but I have never stopped tinkerering. Many projects have been through my hands including a full panel rebuild of a Classic Mini, a Lotus Seven Inspired Replica kit car with a Honda Fireblade engine and a complete rebuild of a 2002 Suzuki GSX1400 from numerous boxes of bits to name just a few.
At the moment I have my 1979 Honda XL185S and a 1990 Honda CBR400RR in pieces slowly being restored along with many welding projects and inventions/modifications to existing components.
Metalworking has always been of interest to me and was a serious consideration when leaving school.
So now I have all the usual metalworking tools including 3 lathes.
The first I bought was an old Union engineers lathe that just had the cross slide and compound slide and the carriage was locked in position. This I am trying to modify to have a leadscrew on the carriage.
My next lathe is a Clarke CL300M which I wasn't very satisfied with until I discovered a bodge by the previous owner wher one of the carriage gib strips had broken and was mended with a piece of hacksaw blade. Two new gib strips later and all the other gibs adjusted I find it to be a really nice lathe but not big enough for the tasks I have in mind.
Which was why I was on the lookout for a larger lathe capable of heavier work and found a 1931 Colchester Bantam that is in very original condition apart from the motor and jackshaft assembly and came with a massive amount of tooling the value of which I'm sure exceeds the price I paid for the lathe.
I have it up and running after minor modifications and adjustments and it really is a nice lathe to work on.
At the moment only one of the seven chucks that came with it fits as the other chucks have backplates for a different lathe so I'm in the process of modifying the ones I have before attempting to make new ones from scratch for the larger chucks.
Anyway thanks for reading so far and I hope to make some contributions soon.
Anthony

**Jon** · Mar 2, 2016, 11:05 AM

Hi Anthony - welcome to HomemadeTools.net

That sounds like a great skill set.

Post some pics of your work if you have any, I know people would like to check it out.

**kbalch** · Mar 2, 2016, 02:57 PM

Hi Anthony,

Welcome!

Lots of car and bike guys around here (me, too!). I just finished a kit of my own and would love to see your Lotus 7 project.

Post some pics, too, of the vintage lathe restoration/refurbishment. Cool stuff! It's great to hear of someone keeping one of the grand old machines running.

What else are you working on at the moment?

Ken

**ants** · Mar 2, 2016, 06:36 PM

Hi Ken
If that's your Ultima Im jealous because I ultimately want to build an Ultima but I want to build a Gardner Douglas Cobra first.
Me and my two sons should have moved into a massive industrial unit on Monday to commence fabricating storage stillages for the scaffolding industry along with some fabrication ideas I have but the two partners that own the land are at loggerheads with each other so it's not looking good at tje moment even though my son has paid £4000 for a forklift truck that's just sat idle in the unit.
Oh well just have to wait and see if something similar turns up.

**kbalch** · Mar 3, 2016, 07:37 AM

Hi Anthony,

Yes, that's my Ultima. The car is great fun, though the project was sometimes incredibly frustrating - having more to do with the less than stellar documentation than anything else. The component quality was absolutely first-rate.

The GD Cobra will be a fantastic car! Definitely keep us posted once you get underway with that project. I'm giving serious thought to building a Daytona Coupe next, though my best friend is about to begin a Factory Five GTM and that's likely to be taking up all my free time for awhile.

Best of luck with your real estate situation…

Ken