First post so please be gentle.

I was trained as a general machinist almost 30 years ago, But since then I haven't really had much to do with the industry, so forgive me if I get any of the terminology wrong.

Anyway, I've wanted an old hobby lathe for ages, So about a month ago I found a pretty little "Willimott Ideal" as a restoration project. It hadn't been used in a very long time, and looked a bit of a mess on the eBay listing, but it was reasonably compleat and I decided that it had potential. When I went to see it I found that what looked like reasonably heavy rust on everything in the pictures was in fact a thick layer of gunky old oil that had got saturated with dust. Underneath it all seems to be in pretty good condition (For it's age), So it's now it's going to be less of a restoration and more of a recommissioning until I strip it again to repaint it.

I've been going through it bit by bit when I get an hour here and there, stripping down sections, cleaning, oiling, and reassembling, Last night I decided to investigate the binding leadscrew. I thought the plain bearings may have got gummed up with congealed oil, so I soaked them with WD40 and reoiled. That didn't work, So I removed the leadscrew assembly to investigate further. Once off the lathe bed the bearings feel silky smooth, so it seems the bearing blocks aren't aligned. It's got single bolt bearing hangers, so I spent a while messing about thinking they must be rotating about the bolt while tightening, I've now come to the conclusion that it's actually the mounting faces on the bed that aren't exactly square to each other. It feels like when I tighten down the hangers bolt it torques up at least one of the the bearing hangers enough to try to push the other end of the leadscrew closer to the bed.

As I never took up engineering as a trade, and only really dabbled with it as a hobby, I haven't got any long straight edges I could check the trueness of the bearing mounting points with, So I'm intending to confirm this is definitely the problem by shimming around the edges of the bearing blocks with feeler gauges until it all turns smoothly (Or not), But then what? Like everyone else, I don't want to spend a fortune fixing this problem.

If it's definitely the mounting points, and I can work out how far out they are with the feeler gauge shims, I could permanently shim them with some 2mm alloy plate sanded to get it close enough to the right angles. Or I could sand the bearing clamps mating faces to get the same results (There's plenty of adjustment on the apron so the half nuts will still be able to line up), Or I could get a bit "Ghetto" with it by thoroughly greasing up the bearing blocks mating face and bolt, then skimming the area in JB Weld, then tighten up the clamps almost to the point where they bind and letting it set. Once done, And as long as I hadn't actually glued the clamps to the bed, it would just be a quick cleanup job to make it look presentable.

Before I choose one option though, I'm wondering if anyone's got better suggestions?

Decent idea Pete, But unfortunately the hangers on the "Ideal" are handed so they're not interchangeable. And the bed on the other side of the gap is just a flat area to mount the head onto and isn't the same height as the bed.

Your reply HAS made me think though. I didn't even consider that the bearing carriers could be twisted. I'm pretty sure the bearings in them will be 3/4", And I've got some 3/4" shafting handy to make a countershaft for this, So I could thread them both into that side by side and visually check for any distortion in them. If nether are obviously twisted I could clamp them together on the middle of the shaft and lightly sand them on a sheet of fine emery paper glued to some 1" thick MDF (That stuff usually has a pretty flat surface). If I only got sanding marks down one side of one of the clamps it would pretty much prove it to be the culprit. If Both sand evenly across their surface it's the mounting surfaces on the bed that are twisted. 8(……… It's strange that I'm now hoping that the pretty much irreplaceable bearing housings are the reason for this binding, Rather than it being a warped and useless irreplaceable bed !

In theory, I could even sand both clamps flat and parallel enough that way by putting something of the right height under either ends of the shaft to stop me sanding an angle on them. Worst case would be me needing to take off so much metal that I still needed to shim them out, But in that case they would at least only need to be flat shim plates.

I suppose if all else fails I could knock out the original plain bearings, sand the mounting face of the clamps flat and to have the same height to the shaft centre line, clout in fresh bearing material, bolt both clamps side by side and in line on an angle plate, then slap a ream through them both.

Yeah mate. I stumbled across Lathes.co.uk about a month ago, just after I got the "Ideal". I've since lost several interesting hours randomly reading about the history and specs of the various lathes I've blagged time on over the last 20 odd years, Plus a fair few I've seen advertised over the years and toyed with getting.

This may be the first lathe I've actually owned, But I've usually been on good enough terms with at least one or two people who are jobbing engineering with their own workshop or keen hobbyists with a lathe or vertical mill.

Thing is, There's only so many times you can blag machine time in a mates shop before you start wondering if you might be holding them up when they should be using them to do paid work, But they're too polite to kick you out. Don't want to lose a friend over something like that, So I finally decided that even if I only get a small lathe, It would probably be good enough for about 90% of the stuff I'd want it for.