Atlas Craftsman 618 Metal Lathe - $450 (Dysartsville)Ītlas Craftsman 618, 101.21400 Metal Hobby Lathe.The other two do not have legible casting numbers. One Zamak headstock was reported as still having a 383-020 casting number.
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Only two Zamak headstocks plus the one photo on the UK site were reported, one being a 10200. Somewhere along the time line, the material call out on the 383-020 drawing was changed to aluminum but no aluminum headstocks turned up in my survey. And the early round-top compound slide was replaced by the later flat-top one. Sometime after 002165 it was changed to 383-020 with no other apparent changes but the paint color. Somewhere between 000295 they changed the color to blue, but the headstock casting and part number remained 383-017 for a while after that. The first few hundred were still painted gray. The first roughly 10,000 10100 's also had cast iron headstocks. All 10100's have Timken tapered roller bearings and a different spindle part number. The 3950 is gray, has a cast iron headstock with ball bearings, and the compound slide is the same as on the earlier Atlas 618.
Plus Sears sold the 3950 (only) as their Model 101.21200. The color is not a consistent identifier. There turn out to have been three major groups and some minor ones. I'm about ready to write up the survey results, which I'll publish here and on Yahoo. I got a lot of responses from Yahoo but not from H-M (two, I think). I recently ran a survey on the MK2 here and on two of the Yahoo Atlas groups. I'm looking forward to some very satisfactory work from this lathe.įirst, it's a 6 x 18, not a 6 x 24. The four jaw chuck that came with it has never been mounted, there's still cosmosline on the mounting threads.
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How to tell them apart, the aluminum headed lathes are painted blue, the cast iron gray. Its the model with the cast iron head, not the Zamak which Clausing called die cast aluminum. I'm in the process now of dis-assembly and cleaning so I can be sure all the original oil and grease has been replaced with new. I examined the ways under a good light and found one minor scratch about 10 inches long on the back way, an oil stain on the front and no other evidence of use. In reality those were probably the first chips the lathe had made. The seller had put a 1/2 piece of steel in the Jacobs chuck on the end of the spindle and made some chips to prove that it worked. I got home (70 minutes later) and got the lathe into my shop. (about a 3 car heated separate building) It came on a fabricated wood and metal base, we removed the lathe from the base and put them both in my Subaru.
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Long story short the seller was a really nice guy, has a whole shop full of lathes and mills both in operation and under construction.
After a 70 minute drive I saw it, smaller than it looked in the pictures, but that's not a problem, it was a whole lot bigger than the HF 5 by 12 I was thinking about. I discussed it with my 'financial adviser' and she said Go Ahead If You Want it. It was advertised as an Atlas by Clausing 6 x 24 lathe, there were four or five pictures and a price. I found this lathe through the (what have you seen on Craigslist) forum.