Thread: Hercus 'B'

About five years ago I acquired Hercus ‘model B’ lathe, somewhat opportunistically. It was functional, but very tired and certainly in need of some serious maintenance and rewiring. Nevertheless I used it a couple of times, but one day there was a big flash from the reversing switch and the workshop went dark!! So it sat there for a few years glaring at me until it got to the top of the ‘To Do’ list.

It is a plain bearing 1956 unit – B5540 – stamped ‘E4’ at the headstock end (don’t know what that means), and ‘BS’ at the tailstock end. I did read somewhere that the ‘S’ indicates a ‘Special’ and wouldn’t have a tailstock. This may be one reason why the tailstock with the lathe is not matching numbers but several years older.

Its turn has now come, and the first job was to remove the headstock to deal with the chewed gear teeth on the spindle. This was beyond me, but luckily a retired engineer friend tackled it with enthusiasm. He has produced new reversing gears and drive gear, and repaired the spindle with a toothed sleeve replacing the original gear teeth which were turned off. Beautiful work, I’ll post a photo when I get it home.

The next known problem is a cracked upper four stepped V-pulley. I’m guessing this is fairly generic, but I haven’t measured it and gone looking yet.

Brett