Nova 1624-44 more Thoughts

13" Laurel wood bowl blank sealed and ready for a few months drying.

I have really been enjoying the new lathe.  As my previous post noted, there are some things that I wish were better implemented, especially the tail stock removal and reattachment, but overall this has been a big step up and I am immensely happy with it.  

I just wanted to note some of the further growing pains we have had to overcome at this point.

The motor mount studs came loose.  Yup, I was wondering why there seemed to be some movement when I locked the belt pulley down, as in it was not locked at all.  Turns out the entire mount screw had come loose.  The directions for assembly tell you not to over tighten the stud for concern of stripping the casting.  If it comes loose again, I will apply some lock tight.  After tightening this back up the belt makes more noise than it used to.  It is not obvious why this is and I will have to go back through it all to figure it out.  This isn't one of those super quiet lathes that you see on YoutTube anyway.  Still, the belt is making more noise than it used to.  

Bolted the feet to the slab the other day.  Good to have it bolted down, but there are little rubber shock absorbers in the feet, so it still has a tiny amount of shimmy when turning off balance roughs.  Each foot has two holes and care has to be taken when marking them and then accurately drilling with a masonry drill.  At this point, I would rather not reattach the weights as it is much easier to clean under the lathe without them.

UPDATE: 6/10/15

Another item to add to the list of little issues.  Yesterday the Headstock belt pulley started to "drift".  There are two belt pulleys in this machine.  One is attached to the motor and the other is the one which actually attaches to the workpiece.  I am turning away when I notice a metal on metal grinding sound.  When looking at the headstock ( with the machine off ), it looks like the pulley is backing away from the piece ( bowl ) and is now abrading on the red metal cover on the back of the headstock.  This is confirmed by trying to set the index pin and it doesn't engage into anything.  OK, take the cover off, remove the nut on the end of the lock down stud.  Find the set screw in the pulley, loosen it, pull the entire pulley off, check it and re-attach.  Works much better now and doesn't make as much noise as it was.