Yes, it could be the bolt. Not necessarily because the bolt is cheap, just that the alloy used to make it may not be easy to machine. (Bolt designers are unlikely to allow for amateur turners in their calculations and might well use metal unsuitable for your needs I've had bolts that machined well, and others that were vile.)

There are other possibilities if you're a beginner: wrong depth of cut, feed-rate, rpm, tool height, &/or tool profile. Have you tested the lathe by turning a known metal rod yet? It may be the lathe is faulty (shot bearings or badly worn) or needs adjustment (tighten the gibs), set the tool height, support the job etc.

If you can provide more detail forum members are good at working out what's going wrong.

Dave

Learn how to check and adjust your headstock bearings

Use your tailstock, a live centre most of the time and a dead centre for critical stuff

Learn how to check your slide and saddle and adjust them

Every tiny error is your enemy, took me a couple of years to master my machine

Then there's the tooling…. and the material

bolts can be a bit weird for the reasons mentioned above, carbide tools tend to work best

Stiffness is often more important than speed

Edited By Ady1 on 03/01/2019 00:02:05

When I worked for Greenwood and Batley they made machines for cold forming the heads on bolts, wire in threadless bolts out. Cold was relative, as a new starter I was invited to pick one out of the skip, bl**dy hot let me assure you

You're welcome. There is a wealth of info, including a cross-section of the headstock bearings that makes things clearer here https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/myfordlathes/info

It's the Yahoo Groups group for Drummondlathe. In the FILE section there (you have to join to access it, free) are copies of the original manuals etc and lots of other good info.

A good book for getting started on these vintage lathes is the vintage book "The Amateur's Lathe" by LH Sparey. Still in print and widely available from booksellers and model suppliers. His instructions for grinding a "knife tool" that works particularly well on these old machines are the clearest and easiest to follow that I have seen.

Live centre is a good idea as these lathes do benefit from its use. The headstock spindle diameter is a bit smallish so heavy cuts – say .100" deep on 1" bar etc – will cause it to flex a bit without a centre. You can use the dead centre ok, just keep it well lubricated with moly grease etc.

Edited By Hopper on 03/01/2019 03:50:20

I made my own live centres, one of my first projects

Bought a pack of cheap bearings from ebay for the job, they aint brilliant but I still use them 10 years later

Buy a DTI with a magnetic stand for 20 quid, you'll definitely need it before long

Enjoy and GL

Edit: I did a headstock stripdown here. Take your time and enjoy the learning of new skills

Edited By Ady1 on 03/01/2019 09:13:52

Not sure that you need much more speed for screw cutting ??

A lot of hardware these days is not screwcut, but the threads are rolled. And if the bolt is high tensile, it will be hard, and dislike being cut.

How hard/tough? 1/2 UNF bolts in W Range put into yield at a tensile load of 9 tons!

I have changed a few of those from bolts into setscrews, with a die. Good cardiovascular exercise, and definitely wet shirt territory.

If there is any manganese in the spec, it is likely to work harden, as you cut. The first cut may be O K but the following ones won't be! If you can get the speed high enough, carbide may do the job. But you need to have everything spot on to succeed.

Howard