Yorkshire Bloke

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

Hi Anthony - welcome to HomemadeTools.net :welcome:

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.

Hi Anthony,

Welcome! :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

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.

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

Welcome to the forums, Anthony! :welcome: Got any pictures of your project car builds?

I just got a used Clarke CL300M ... would love to chat more about it.

Have you modified or replaced the motor in it?