Photos of my Henry Milnes Lathe (for Ralph)

Mainly for Ralph, here are a couple of photos of my old Henry Milnes lathe. This was purchased from Lincolnshire fire service, I bought it from the guy that got it from them. It came with a mountain of tooling including 3 jaw and 4 jaw chucks, keyless tailstock chuck, live and dead centres, travelling and fixed steadies, faceplate, change wheels and loads of tools / drills etc. It is a full screw cutting capable machine although I have yet to use it for that purpose. It has power feed and cross feed with reverse on both. The built in gearbox gives me quite a good speed range.

I am lead to believe that this was also marketed by Denham with the model number DF4.

Hi David,

Yes, it's virtually identical to my Denham Junior Mk 2.

Looks like yours has raising blocks though to increase the centre height?

John

Hi John, yes mine has a raised centre height, it will turn a very large diameter with the gap in the bed. Does yours have a method for locking the spindle to enable chuck removal?

Yours is in much better condition than mine, I really would like to repaint mine when time allows.

Dave.

Thank you Dave, very interesting to see. Thank you for the info. My main interest is on older machinery and it is a name you do not see very often any more.

Hi Dave,

No, there's no means of locking the spindle. I just put it into the lowest gear to remove chucks etc. I've only got one chuck useable at the moment and I need to machine some more backplates to suit some others that I've got. Unfortunately, the spindle thread is not a common size so ready made backplates aren't available.

I've completely rebuilt mine and repainted it. It came from a friend who bought it over 40 years ago from a government surplus supplier. There's a plate on it which says it came from the Royal Radar Establishment and another which says it was refurbished in 1955. It had just sat on my friend's garage floor for the 40 years and unfortunately most of the headstock bearings had developed pits in the inner and outer races due to the spindle remaining in the same position for all that time. All but the two main bearings at the chuck end of the spindle had to be replaced.

John