Restoring a Hardinge HLV-H Toolroom Lathe

Restoring a Hardinge HLV-H Tool Room Lathe

The Hardinge HLV-H and the Monarch 10EE are two of the best tool room lathes ever made. I'm sure others would disagree, but these are my opinions. It was a simple fact that I could not afford a new lathe. The new HLV-H is around $45,000 and a new 10EE is around $90,000. So I had to find an old one and restore it. Since the Monarch is a more complex lathe, both mechanically and electronically than the HLV-H, the choice of what lathe to look for became very simple. The thought of restoring a 10EE intimidated me. In all honesty, the HLV-H is a more "comfortable" lathe for me to operate than the 10EE because it feels like a small bench top lathe on a desk while the 10EE feels more bulky. Each have their pro's and con's: threading on the HLV-H is a dream, while you can't hog on an HLV-H like you can on the 10EE.

In September of 2003, I was lucky enough to purchase a 1970 Hardinge HLV-H Tool Room lathe at an auction at a very good price. The HLV-H came with lot of tooling: 3 Jaw Chuck, faceplate, steady rest, many 5C collets, taper attachment, fixture plate, carriage indicator holder & stop, set of change gear, and a bunch of other things I have not even sorted through yet. A wonderful friend of mine, Kurt Bjorn, practically gave me his 4 jaw chuck. I managed to score a new Bison 3 jaw and a 6 jaw Set-Tru chucks on eBay at a very reasonable price. So I was fully tooled up, but needed to clean up the lathe.

Mechanically, the HLV-H was in great shape and cut near factory specs. Cosmetically, it was a mess: a very poor orange paint job, cracks and chips down to the casting, dried up oils all over the place. Here is the a picture of the lathe right after I took it off the pallet:

After 6 weeks of stripping the paint, sanding, filling, sanding, cleaning, painting, we finally got to this point:

Couple of switches were broken and the wipers needed to be replaced. Just for fun, I replace all of the name plates. The paint I chose was Sherwin Williams Macro Poxy 646 which is a two part epoxy based paint. I went with the industrial ("battleship") gray color, but it came out lighter than I had hoped. The picture above is actually even lighter than the final color because of the camera's flash. By this point, I just wanted to get on with it and use the fine machine to make chips. The paint is very durable, but somewhat brittle. Normal use has not resulted in any chips or discoloration, but there are two spots that I accidentally hit with a hammer (very lightly) when I was reassembling the lathe. In both cases, the paint chipped instead of denting. Since I only partially disassembled the lathe, I could not (for safety reasons) spray on the paint. I chose to use a mohair roller and I ended up with a hammer-tone finish which looks very nice. Using a roller meant the finish was not as smooth as the factory look, but the hammer-tone added a nice texture and it certainly was a lot easier than spraying. The entire lathe was painted in three two hour sessions. All epoxy paints have a pot life -- a duration of time after which the paint can no longer be used. The Macro Poxy 646 has a two hour pot life at 70 degree F, so that made it very convenient. My wife, Pearl, and I painted for two hours, three days in a row: the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday after Thanksgiving of 2003. I could not have done this without Pearl's help. She did 90% of the painting and I was there mostly for moral support and cheering her on: "Good job dear! Oh, you missed a spot."

Here are some Hardinge related links:

5Bears Research: This is my friend, Kurt Bjorn's site. His restoration of a HLV-BK inspired me to do the same. Kurt gave me a lot of pointer and moral support during this process. He also sold me his 4 jaw chuck since I needed one and could not find one. He even went scouring local machine tool resellers looking for chucks for me.
Hugh Sparks is another great guy that provided a lot of help and inspiration. Hugh did a complete rebuild of an HLV-BK much like what Kurt had to do.
Paul Babin of Babin Machine Tools is just a wonderful person who helped me out with absolutely nothing in it for himself. He answered all of my questions very patiently and even gave me his cell phone number to call in case I ever got stuck! He is a clever inventor with some great inventions coming out soon.
Iverson & Co: These guys an renowned Hardinge rebuilders. Very expensive but when they are done, you won't be able to tell the difference between your lathe and a new one. They restore the lathe back to factory specs. I did not use their service, but they were helpful in answering my questions. A total rebuild (like new) costs $20,000 last time I asked!
Mailing lists: the Practical Machinist has a Hardinge forum and there is also a Yahoo Hardinge Mailing List.

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