Got a Good Story About Buying a Lathe?

In March this year a 'Restored sheraton lathe' (A copy of the Southbend model A 9" lathe, made in Australia) appeared on ebay fairly locally so I watched in expecting it to sell quickly. The weekend approaching still not sold so I decided I'd send the seller an email and arrange a visit expecting it to be in someone's workshop or garage. To my surprise when I google the address the seller provided it was at the Norton motorcycle factory in Castle Donington!

On the Saturday we traveled down and spent a good 3 hours having a chat and tour around the place. I have no experience in the metalworking industry (I work in a joinery shop programming a CNC router) and I'm not particularly into motorcycles but the work I saw was fantastic and the 3 hours flew by. The chap selling the lathe mentioned that they were preparing to bring in CNCs hence the sale of the lathe and sure enough they have some pictures on there facebook page a week or 2 after I was there of the CNCs arriving.

I did buy the lathe on the day so the chap loaded it into his van and delivered it to our shop for nothing.

Back in 2009 I wanted a lathe to fabricate some fittings to enable me to fit forks from a different motorcycle on to mine. Plans for the spacers were provided by the online owners club. So I found lathes.co.uk and a Barker 5x24 and then read up on that lathe. It was down in Hereford. Arranged with a mate to lend a hand and set off down to Hereford where the lathe was duly demonstrated, loaded into my Vectra estate after much cussing and heavng, and we set off back home. My pal said "Be bloody careful, we must have half a ton of metal behind us!". All went well until we were reaching a junction where we would turn off. All of a sudden cars, lorries and a National Express coach began swerving around in front of us. Then a blue Rover 75 towing a caravan swerved and launched the caravan about a foot in the air! Then we saw the cause of the problem - a set of ladders spinning across the M1 carriageway heading our way. I gingerly applied the brakes and steered towards the off ramp. The ladders lazily passed just in front of us on their journey to the outside lane. We both needed a stiff drink after that!

I managed to get an Elliott 10" shaper for £112 on ebay after the seller had only put "model engineer" in the title so hardly anybody was bidding on it. It was collection only but for £40 he loaded into his van (lived about 15 miles away) and out of it on to my drive and into my garage. Bargain!

John Coates:

A good friend of mine has a Barker bought from an industrial site in London. I recall him carrying the headstock singlehanded down three flights of stairs - he wouldn't even attempt that today! The lathe had, of course, been installed in one piece via crane.

A friend rang me and said there is a lathe rusting away in a coal bunker
next door I picked it up it was an old Myford super seven with no tailstock

Back in 1995, I was looking for a s/hand English lathe having been bitten by the bug after inheriting and reading multiple bound vols. of M.E from 1900 onwards. Found a circa 1915 Drummond BS type + a mountain of tooling in a shed in Devon, and bought it. Collected in a Citroen AX (or tried to) as the weight had the body rubbing on the rear tyres.... Made it home (slowly) which was a 200 mile trip. The lathe (with its original stand and treadle gear) was 100% complete and unmolested, but it was well-worn, although still capable of some good work. At one point I also had three other Drummonds (all B-types), and all rather worn out. Sold them all circa 2008 when I was the only successful bidder on Fleabay for a 1920's/30's Milnes type R. This too came with a load of original Milnes tooling, a complete set of changewheels, the original countershaft, motor and bench and an oak machinist tool chest stuffed with hand tools...all for £150. I'd read that Milnes R's were known as the "Rolls Royce" of small lathes in their day and LBSC used one for several decades and wrote enthusiastically about them in ME. This lathe (under years of oily grime) turned out to have very little wear. The frosting was still visible on the ways and headstock/tailstock alignment was near-perfect. I've used it for quite a few jobs, including making a new mandrel for a friends disc-cutting lathe. I reckon that its accuracy is only limited by my embryo machinist's "skills". Any other Milnes type R owners/users on here?

That's harsh. I've seen at least one who was more fun than the real one... :D

Hello All.

Some years back when looking to buy a Myford lathe, there was an advertisement for a Myford in the local newspaper. I phoned and made the appointment to view the lathe and was assured it was in good condition. I arrived at the house and the lathe was on his drive (thankfully a dry day). While looking at the lathe he advised that he had just finished renovating it, "The slides were quite rusty so I polished them up with emery cloth"- he said.

I politely said I would 'think about it' and left. Obviously I did not buy.

It has a good ending though.

I had seen a few more lathes and was unhappy with them or the sellers were asking 'silly money'. I was visiting my mother and 'out of the blue' she told me a friend of hers was selling up his workshop and he had a Myford lathe. This was a complete surprise as I did not usually discuss engineering and lathes with my mother. I contacted her friend and saw the lathe. His interest was steam locomotives and his workmanship was (in my opinion) outstanding. I felt that the lathe had been well looked after and so I bought it. A good purchase, I am very pleased with it and continue to use it.

When I was thinking on getting into model engineering, I started looking at Warco lathes. I had soft spot for them as they started in Shere in Surrey Their yard backed onto the primary school playground and I used to gaze at the then mysterious machinery with wonderment In those days they were exporting rather than importing. Enough of Warco, in the village where I live there is small "traditional" engineering business. It was founded post war and is now run by the two sons of the original founder. The father was a real character and had built a scale traction engine as well as running the business. Sadly he passed away a number of years ago. One night in the local I got chatting to the sons about their business and I asked about what the old man used for model engineering. The response was that he had a used a Chipmaster and that it was a right pain as it was always in the way in workshop and they wanted shot of it. A deal was soon struck, they moved it the 1/2 mile to my garage and even made up a sheet metal splash guard as they couldn't find the original. Then followed the project of conversion to VFD. The Chippie is a great lathe and much better than me! The lathe plus VFD conversion was less than I was looking to spend with Warco, although I did subsequently by a VMC mill from them.

Nobby:

Your interesting post ended rather abruptly: I was hoping you were going to say something about how you replaced the tailstock and carried out the other modifications and improvements evident in your photo.

HI ega & Guys
Over the years I made the tailstock in my small workshop Using a Bantham lathe & Drummond shaper
Here is a couple of pictures if you click on my photos on the side you can see more items Its difficult to go into detail
Regards George

Edited By Nobby on 05/06/2017 22:47:25

Edited By Nobby on 05/06/2017 22:48:18

My old man bought what is now my Drummond M Type in the UK circa 1952 from a secondhand dealer of some sort. The salesman told him it had been used to make aircraft parts during WW2. So I always imagined it had come from some factory with dozens of the lathes lined up running off an overhead flat belt or similar. But this lathe has had a shopmade threading dial added, graduated leadscrew handwheel, graduated tailstock quill, leadscrew swarf guards and so on, all pretty common model engineer's mods of the day, as outlined by Duplex and others in ME mag, so have to wonder if it belonged to some model engineer who made aircraft parts for the war effort on a contract basis in his home workshop. Guess we'll never know.

Whatever its history, it did some work at some point in its past, having worn out at least two half nuts and the bed dimensions indicate it has been remachined at least once while the standard headstock bearings were bored out and white metalled.

Whatever, the salesman saw the Aussie merchant marine engineer coming and sold him the lathe with a duff set of change gears that was nowhere near complete, included some bizarre oddball numbers of teeth and most were bored and keyed like Myford gears so did not fit the Drummond studs. To late to complain or exchange by the time the lathe reached home in Tasmania and was set up several years later! Such gears being unobtainium in the colonies it took 60 years odd before I used the miracle of Fleabay to complete the gear set.

I'm not sure what the old man paid for it, maybe 10 or 20 quid or so but the old lathe has more than earned its keep in that time.

About 10 years ago a mate sold his Centec mill. It was agreed with the elderly gent buying it that we would deliver it for a small fee (Cardiff to Brighton) so we duly set off to arrive at the most stunning 3 storey town house. It was only when we got out we realised that the gentleman lived in a 2nd floor flat in this town house. The flat was full of books, an ML7, tooling etc. He must have been in his 70's and not exactly a muscle man so we ended up dismantling as much as we could, gingerly lifting the bits up the beautiful oak stairs one step at a time and reassembling it for him. We drove off very quickly worried that it may soon end up in the ground floor with all the weight in that flat!

Nobby:

Thank you for the photos you posted and for referring me to your albums. Making a tailstock must have been a considerable feat.

Edited By ega on 06/06/2017 09:45:59