G'day all
I've got a curious problem on my cross slide that I knew about early in my rebuild, but dismissed as just being dry dovetails...
Here's the story - I pulled all the lathe apart, cleaned, degreased and stripped the paint off all the parts (in this case, think of the cross slide in particular). I'd put things back as I finished up to check wear, fit and a quick once-over as I was going. When I put the cross slide on the saddle, and aligned the dovetail (the one opposite the gib) there was a huge drag as I tried to push/pull it. No probs, I thought it's just because it was dry, so didn't really think much about it. Bear in mind, the only contact was the one dovetail (closest to the chuck)

This morning, being half asleep, I put the slide on backwards and suddenly the drag disappeared. I realised the slide was on backwards, so turned it around the right way - and the drag was back...
It dawned on me then that I might have wringing on those dovetail faces, the same as gauge blocks do.
It was so pronounced, that I could get it wrung enough to be able to push the saddle the full length of the bed, just by pushing on the cross slide without breaking the bond. That's a 10kg static load!

Ok, the question is - should I be worried about it? My thoughts are that if it wrings that much, there's probably no room for lube oil when I get all this back together. A possible fix I pondered was to DS tape some 240 W&D on one face and roughen the surface a little. I don't particularly want to machine it if possible.

Any thoughts?


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