| The original idea for the repair was this: I would cut off the cross-slide screw near the gear, face off the end of the gear, bore it to accept a 5/16" unhardened steel dowel pin, and bore a section of the new threaded rod likewise. I decided to, however, save some effort and forego the dowel pin altogether. What I then planned on doing is cutting the cross-slide screw 1-1/2" from the end of the gear, turning it down to a standard size like 1/4", threading it, drilling the new 1/2-10 rod and threading it with a bottoming tap. |
| Starting to turn down the cut-off end of the cross-slide screw. |
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| Once the end above was turned down to about 0.260" I took a 1/4-20 die and threaded the end. I then drilled and tapped the new 1/2-10 screw (to accept the 1/4-20 male end of the above part) on my Grizzly 7x12 mini-lathe. I applied high-strength red Loctite threadlocker to the male end and screwed it into the new 1/2-10 screw. The end result looked like this: |
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| Where did I get the matching 1/2-10 L.H. acme nut from? I had my brother-in-law in India have two of them made for me. He had them bored out to 0.400" and I then tapped them with a 1/2-10 tap I got from Enco for about $40. This is what the bored-out nut looked like: |
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| Even though you can't see them in this picture, this nut has the identical locking button and screw that the original South Bend part has. It works just fine, and my cross-slide has about two thousandths of backlash! That is more than enough for me. I am pleased with this repair. -Bilal 10/14/'05 |
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