Well, It has not been sitting in the corner of someones de-humidified workshop for 60 years with a dustcover on.

The cross slide and compound slide both had a bucketful of backlash, so I took them off last night to check out the leadscrews and nuts. I’ve stripped the cross slide completely and the leadscrew was pretty badly worn, with some damage which actually chased out the brass nut.

Amazingly I just found one on ebay(!) and snapped it up. I haven’t stripped the compound slide yet but I’ll probably do it tonight.
The next thing to do is to take the saddle off and look at the underneath.

Part of me really wants to strip the thing completely and have the bed re-ground, and scrape the saddle.. but that’s a reasonable amount of work.

Also I’ve found that the brass helical back gear drive from the main spindle is badly worn, but it might be ok. Wonder what the spares situation would be for that?

The more I look at this lathe, the more I like it. The details are superb.