G'day from Australia

Hello Archie,

Welcome to the forum,

Info on Wandess HERE if you haven't seen it already.

Neil,

Nice looking machine

MichaelG.

Looks like a good solid old unit in the pics on the link, and somewhat of a rarity by the sound of it. Can you post pics of yours?

Hi Archie, I was fitting large sliding doors to a garage in billingham[ billingham motors teesside] & had to go into the basement for power & I "clocked" a machine in the corner as you do!! & HAD to investigate not being nosey of course, it turned out to be a wandess centre lathe,so after a bit of negotiating it was mine for £25.00,wandess made garage machinery, boring machines etc.I used it for a while & good it was too but I allready had a myford so I stripped it down & sold the cabinet stand for the price I paid for the lathe,I then bought a pallas horizontal miller & grafted the wandess headstock on to make it a vertical miller it had a bronze tapered bearings so was quite robust, I then sold the pallas when I got a bridgeport but kept the headstock " in case it comes in usefull" the bed & tailstock went to my brother, looking back now I should have kept it as a lathe[along with all tha motor bikes I sold on [now worth a fortune] hope you have success with yours, I only ever saw another & that was owned by a chap in west auckland, mot too far from me.

Hello all. This is my Wandess 4" lathe. It has a gap bed is 20 inches between centres. Although not cosmetically perfect it is in extremely good shape mechanically. It is missing it's original Dewhurst reversing switch. At the moment I have it wired for forward operation only. I can't find a Dewhurst switch here in Australia and most of the companies I've spoken to haven't even heard of one.

Artfully codger, that is very interesting about using the headstock for another machine. I have a broken 9x20 lathe that I am going to repurpose in the near future. If these Wandess machines are really not that well known it deepens the mystery as to how mine came to Australia.

Cheers Archie

Hi Archie,

That looks lik the one I had,the changewheel guard & the belt drive are casr aluminium,the headstock is bolted to the bed so just unbolts off [like a myford] the changewheels are 20dp like myfords,I made 90 degree bends for the oilers as it was mounted vertically along with the backgear mechanism, I've recently been to ozz to my daughters in joondalup perth so while I was there I made a visit to the local model engineering club, perth northen district model engineering society in vasto place balcatta, a great bunch of guys and a really good set up they made me really welcome with coffee & biscuits & look round the track & workshops[& the usual banter of course] thanks lads I'll call again when I'm next at my daughters.

Graham.

Hi Archie,

The 4 back gears on the wansess ie 2 on the mandrel & 2 on the countershaft are all 20dp,& the outer gear on the mandrel which drives the tumbler gears[one is 18t & one is 26t & the inner gear which connects to them are all 18dp, the outer gear which is keyed to the last of the 18dp drive is 20dp which is the same as my myford gears & that drives the gear train on the banjo for threadcutting & self act, I can't be 100% sure of the bore size of these gears though as I've not got the banjo & studs & my myford has a geabox hence no studs to measure, no doubt one of the lads on here will know then you can compare size with yours

Graham.