Member postings for CHRISTOPHER MILLS 1

Phil,

Congratulations! I am very pleased to hear this, and will watch your You Tube video

Best

Chris

Phil,

Lovely job!

Have you not got the plinth's door?

Best

Chris

Phil,

Many congratulations all round here!

But, you have covered up one of your CovMac's most beautiful components, its clutch drum?!

Did you ever look inside clutch drum?

Very nice to see you on verge of making chips

Mine is still sadly in bits, as my engineering world is presently shelved, in lieu of becoming a house builder

Best,

Chris

Phil,

I checked my CovMac's drip tray, and Woody is right, it is wrought, or steel, not cast iron

Best

Chris

Moving lathe weight is a real knack: My professional machinery mover, Edward Rutter, moved my CovMac bed, headstock plinth and tailstock plinth, 9 inches across a concrete floor, just using his hands and arms, nothing else at all

Chris

Phil,

I cannot recall my chip tray, whether cast iron or steel, but I will look next week, when I go to Somerset

Best

Chris

Phil,

What sort mechanism do you think there is within the big clutch drum?

Chris

Phil,

Fantastic to see it!!

You have beaten me wholesale

Best

Chris

Andy,

Many thanks - When I first began, I mixed these up with Holbrook 10C's - I loved both

My Karger here posted was actually made much earlier than I had reckoned, in 1938

Were there Holbrook C10's, sharing this headstock styling, at that point?

Did Holbrook take this styling section from Karger?

Chris

KWIL

Many thanks - brilliant thinking - I am sure you have the right answer here, because there is another on the tailstock plinth, which runs in the opposite plane, so that you could wheel it around - presumably, the carrier wheels would have been castors?

Perhaps, it would have been a simple cruciform shape - a cross of two scaffold poles, and three castors?

Chris

Edited By CHRISTOPHER MILLS 1 on 24/03/2017 10:23:32

Andy,

Many thanks - I am not with my Karger presently, but I will photograph the label next time I am

The cut out I mean is right at floor level, left hand side of front headstock plinth, there is a semicircular cut out, as if something ran through it, a pipe or cabling

It seems to be a feature of Karger plinths, and I cannot imagine what they were for

At some point, I need to copy the change wheel cover door, as I lack one entirely

Chris

Andy,

Sorry, I have just noticed that our respective compound slide housing and tool posts are completely different

Mine has a four way tool post with a ratcheting system, which enables quick change from one side to another

Chris

Andy,

Many thanks - yours is virtually identical to mine, and these, I believe, are late in the production order

I do not have the covering shroud to right of apron

My lathe's plate, too, reads "DL1/53"

What might be the curved cut-out at base of headstock plinth? Mine has this, too

There is some company material in Berlin Archives

Mine is in the same green, but originally cream, to which it will go back

You are welcome to Owner's Manual information, if you can get me a personal email for you, I will forward it

By all means we should set up a Karger Owners Club - the only other Karger stuff I can find in the ether is a Czechslovakian owner - machine is posted on You Tube - but there is a huge language barrier between English and Czech

Chris

Edited By CHRISTOPHER MILLS 1 on 21/03/2017 07:50:40

Hello Big Burner and Mike Berry 2,

Sorry, I have been too busy of late to keep up - it is great that there are two other Kargers out there

I have begun restoring mine, and would like to hear further from you both

I look forward to photographs

Mine has a virtually complete set of change wheels, five chucks, and a fixed steady rest

We have a few repairs to make, louvred aluminium cover to front headstock plinth got smashed by previous owner, and I am missing change gears cover door - I would love to see pictures of one of these, as I cannot work out how it attached

I do have a good portion of Owner's Manual, which a German friend kindly translated - 16 pages - I do not know how much is missing

Best wishes

Chris

Edited By CHRISTOPHER MILLS 1 on 19/03/2017 09:08:25

A Happy Christmas to you, Cath and the kids, Phil

Chris

Thanks Nick

Weight is estimated @ 600 kgs

External oil tank is huge

It has a third power bar, upon which you can cut feed from the spindle, via switchgear in a box on tailstock end of the bed

Tool post is on a ratchet system

Chris

I have a new lathe, finally obtaining a German Karger DL-1/53, tool room lathe, one of my first loves when I began looking at lathes - the only one I saw before this one was unaffordable at £1500

These were made 1950s/'60s, to some degree sharing styling with Smart & Browns, and Holbrook C10s

It came with lot of extras, fixed steady, almost all its change wheels, and five cam-lock chucks

With a variable speed motor, on a mechanical selection method, its selector stalk is similar to a CVA

I think it has a top speed in the 1100s

It has a three phase motor, a full coolant pumping system, and an externally mounted oil tank and pump (it is the square box to right of the headstock plinth

It needs some work, but is in basically pretty good order, under the oil and grease

Does anybody out there own another Karger, or has owned one in the past? I am trying to set up a Karger Owners' Club

Karger, having an umlaut over 'a', pronounces as Care-grrr

Here she is, bought out of a warehouse in Wisbech

With twin plinths, astonishingly, for a medium sized lathe, it has a 3 MT tailstock quill

Here is a rather Happy Christmas made in 1950s' Berlin

Chris Mills

Edited By CHRISTOPHER MILLS 1 on 22/12/2016 13:34:33

Westbury,

When you go to post a reply, click on the camera image in the posting window, top bar second from right, and then I think you choose your image from your album and click 'upload' or similar - then click in the posting window

It is easy, once you accidentally choose the right method, honest!

I can see an image of your S800 in your album, blue, and a lovely job you appear to have made of it

I have five lathes, four British and a German Karger, and my Cromwell Smallpeice is the only British one which approaches Karger quality

It is why Cromwells are rare today, they were rare in their own day for they were so expensive to purchase

Best

Chris

Michael,

Do you mean Cromwell's Mk II screw-cutting lathe, or the S.800? If the former, I have mine in pieces, and could show you exactly how it works. It engages and disengages a single dog clutch towards headstock. No messing about with dial indicators.

Chris

My Cromwell Mk II screw-cutter has a manual motor, a 1 HP Brook, driving through a six speed pulley system onto a three pulley headstock.

Chris