Member postings for thaiguzzi

Excellent!

Thanx for that.

Identical!

Enquiring minds, so i pulled the front location plunger housing off a bit. Painted behind, held on by two 1/4" BSW allen heads AND two locating dowels a very snug fit.

Nice lathe.

Yeah, i'd swap a Boxford for that.

Another PO Research Institute lathe surfaces...

Good points in both the above two posts. Thanx. Keep them coming...

Thanx for that, i agree with your point no. 2, and possibly no. 3.

Yes my (badly) stamped numbers every 6 holes. Saved lots of counting. Stamped in situ. As i mentioned earlier it is a large lump of beautifully machined iron with a lovely radius each side.

Perspex shelf.

Edited By thaiguzzi on 11/02/2017 14:04:15

"Factory made" means made in the Boxford factory. A non std item to special order. The original question was is this a Boxford made item or aftermarket/home made? I believe it is factory made and fitted.

+1.

Not cheap, but top quality.

I have the Creusen vertical belt linisher one side, polisher the other side.

Excellent. Love it.

I use the shaper and a table extension for the lines, and a homemade UPT (Harley flywheel half for the base - it ain't gonna fall over!) for the numbers, but that is ingenious !!! Talk about thinking outside the box ! Superb.

I like OCD in the workshop. That is very nice.

+1.

Head stock, and indeed the whole lathe is original paint. Only the doors and splash guard are non original Boxford paint.

I do think it's a factory fit.

Bit of history about the lathe that i know of since i've owned it.

I got the lathe in around 2000/2001 when i still had my workshop in the UK. It came via a good friend who was emigrating, and came in a part ex deal with a couple of motorcycle basket cases. Complete bikes, part restored, in parts, an iron head Sportster and a T140 Triumph Bonneville. He was a commercial aircraft mechanic working from Norwich airport, and was going to use the lathe at home (his shed and projects had the best of everything, tools, aftermarket parts etc befitting of a certified aircraft technician) prior to him deciding to up sticks from the Norfolk coast and move to southern Spain.

I was'nt that interested in the Boxford, it was part of the deal with the bikes, as i had two Colchesters (a 24" Student, and a 36" Master, both round heads) in the shop, i just put it in the corner, covered it up, and thought one day, maybe tart it up and out it to some shed dweller, or home machine shop enthusiast, or heaven forbid, a model engineer. It was in lovely condition and pretty much fully tooled.

Anyway, 2003 rolls around, i've had enough, decided to shut the shop, sell up, sell the freehold, move abroad, though to NE Thailand. In hindsight, i should of kept one of the Colchesters (love my round head Colchesters), but weight, and lack of cheap converters, inverters, at the time, made me decide to sell the industrial stuff and keep the little Boxford.

The Boxford was 3 phase, again at that time inverters were pretty new and pricey, and converters were outragous money, and did'nt have a great reputation. Being in the trade, i got a machine tool service engineer friend of mine to find and locate the very rare correct 930 rpm, 1.5 hp single phase motor, s/hand, and we fitted it in with a bunch of swearing and skinned knuckles. New belts at the same time. One of my employees knocked up an extended left hand side motor access door (the replacement 1 phase motor was 50% bigger than the original 1 hp 3 phase motor), and also fabbed up a lovely splash guard. All got colour matched at our local powder coaters. Then i got a professional machine tool electrician in who owed me a favour or two (again, handy knowing people in the trade), who completely re wired the whole lathe, to run off a household plug (light and suds, seperate plugs).

The lathe has an imperial gearbox and leadscrew, but both top slide and cross slide feed screws and dials are metric (?).

The lathe came to me with the correct 3 jaw chuck, 4 jaw, faceplate, catchplate, both steadies, Crawford 3C collets (90% complete metric and imperial c/w several duplicates) and all gubbins, all the change gears required to cut all threads, 4 TPI and below and all metric inc the big 100/127 compound gear, correct indexing 4 way toolpost, and all the usual stuff that fits in the headstock and tailstock spindles.

So, i moved out here in 03, and my containers with Boxford followed me out here in 05. Prior to storing the lathe, i purchased a Bison Dickson QCTP from Cromwells. The t slotted cross slide was purchased from the UK since i've been out here, still have the original. All the plastic balls on all the handles have been replaced with brass. ditto, all my machine tools, TS mill, Boxford shaper, Stent T&CG, Taiwan pillar drill, none of them have any plastic on, everything on the end of a handle is brass.

That dividing wheel/disc is useful for spinning the chuck by hand with gears dis engaged, but i have rarely used the dividing hole facility, having an H/V rotab (c/w plates) for the mill and shaper, even though it's handy for 3, 4 and 6 marking out on discs for radial bolts etc whilst still set up in the chuck. Oh, and the (poorly) stamped numbers on the rim, every 6, not original, my handiwork unfortunately.

This lathe has probably seen more work in the last 12 years than in it's previous life. It gets used a LOT, i love it dearly, but on those big jobs, too big for the spindle hole, or some nasty 5" diameter steel, i do miss my round head Colchester...

Possibly worth contacting Boxford with the serial number off the bed, again thanx.

Very interesting. Thank you very much.

Sorry about the photography, that is not rust (honest!) on the plunger housing, just oily steel...

Hi, i'm asking for opinions and info from fellow Boxford lathe owners, past and present.

Enclosed pics of the 72 hole dividing disc/wheel and plunger engagement that came fitted to my lathe when i bought it. I have never seen another like it, it's not on Tony's lathe site, but it just looks too factory made and factory finish to be a home shop made jobbie. Note the brass plaque on the headstock "Post Office Research Station London". It's held on directly to the std 1.5" x 8TPI spindle with 3 radial c'sunk screws. Beautifully made of iron. Also the plunger mechanism knurling looks identical to the micrometer bed stop. Lathe is a '69 VSL.

Any opinions and info?

Now that is very neat and very simple. I like it. A bonus is you're not getting hot fingers...