Milling machine identification - "Deutsche Waffen Und Munitionsfabriken"

Hope we all love a bit of mystery machine identification. Found this at auction with no context other than an accompanying Lorch lathe. Googling the maker the nameplate would be better suited sitting on a machinegun rather than a mill. I assume they bought it off the maker, slapped their name on it only for it to then be stolen by an englishman circa 1918.

I seem to remember seeing a lathes article about a mill with the same unique slot on the front of the spindle but going through again I can't find it.

edit: more pictures in album, it has an odd mechanism that shifts the pulley back and forth linked to the table feed trip switch 

Edited By Rainbows on 30/07/2021 18:16:13

Probbly liberated by the victors as spoils of war reparations

The British chap who got the post WW2 volkwagen factory going had to beat them off with a stick to stop the place being stripped bare

Edited By Ady1 on 30/07/2021 18:01:10

More likely a machine in their workshops with an Asset No., than a product with a Serial No. - perhaps milling breechblocks for Lugers or suchlike.

Edited By Mick B1 on 30/07/2021 18:18:48

There's a £600 Chinese multi-process welder in the background...

That is a Denbigh H4!

Or a German copy.

Or did Denbigh copy / badge-manufacture some German make?

Look on lathes.co, under Denbigh.

(I have one, presently under restoring).

There are differences though, but it's quite possible your new acquistion was a later, more developed version than shown on Tony Griffiths' archives and my specimen. His archive photos show an open belt-feed for the table-feed cardan-shaft, and on the right-hand side (operator's right).

On mine:-

- The chip-tray is rectangular as yours is. Toney Griffiths' catalogue photos of other, perhaps older, editions show a rounded tray. Also my chip-tray is not on the machine but the integral top of a massive cast-iron stand that when minus the machine looks wierdly like some Victorian patent "thunderbox".

- The table feed is/was as described above, and with the handle on the right. The wormwheel is still on the screw but the rest is missing. It is possible yours was adapted for "left-hand drive" of course.

- The overhead arm is similar but solid not tube, and the reduced section on mine is eccentric to the bar, perhaps to align the drop-bracket.

- The spindle nose is not cross-slotted (for a collet with driving-dogs), but is a plain MT3 taper.

- Mine too has that curious little protruberance with a blind hole, on the front hoop leg, and of no clear purpose as the spindle is lubricated through those two oil-holes. I have not worked out what that is for.

- Mine lacks a depth-stop, but seems never to have had one, rather than lost it. Nor does it have what looks like a cover over the back of the spindle, but that might something to do with the different feed mechanism.

- Different table. Denbigh did use single-slot tables but mine has 2.

- Mine carries 'Denbigh' embossed on the stands' cast-iron door, but not the machine itself. Instead the body has the trade-mark Staffordshire Knot embossed on both sides, in positions corresponding to the German armaments plate on yours. I wonder what that owner's plate might conceal.

A curious feature on my H4 is its 6tpi feed-screw, and this exercise make me wonder I had simply assumed inch-fractions and not measured it very accurately. All I did was wind the handle a few turns and watch a pencil mark against a rule. 1/6" = 4.2333 mm; so close I am tempted to measure it properly.

.....

Some years ago somebody exhibited a beautifully-restored and very much "breathed-on" Denbigh H4, geared drive and all to his own design, at Sandown. Only... It was not 'Denbigh' on the side but some other name, I vaguely recollect 'Patrick' but could be wrong.

There was a lot of badge-building going on - my "IXL" lathe I subsequently donated to Lynton & Barnstaple Railway's workshops (I wonder if they still have what had been an extremely useful lathe to me?) proved from Mr. Griffiths' scriptures to be an Erhlich, made in Germany. IXL was just a machine-tool seller.

In the mid 60s as an apprentice I spent some time underneath a capstan lathe, (making and fitting a coolant catch tray or something similar), which had a similar sort of plate....not the same but similar. It turned out that it was one of several, six or seven I think which were "War Reparations". They were just about worn out, but still earning their keep at least twenty years after the end of the conflict. Wish that I could remember the manufacturer!!

cheers

Bill

Not a German speaker, but the plate may translate as "German Army Muntions Works"

"Waffen" suggests to me that it may date from the time when an Austrian Corporal became Chancellor, so mid to late 30s?

Howard

Not a German speaker either but does 'Waffen' not mean 'war production'?.............Army translates as 'Heer'.

EDIT;  'Waffen'....'armed' or arms......so, 'German Arms and Munitions Manufacture'

Edited By Bob Stevenson on 31/07/2021 10:17:33

That corporal was only in charge for 12 years but he seems to have inspired 1000 years of TV documentaries

.

Wikipedia is often helpful: **LINK**

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Waffen-_und_Munitionsfabriken

MichaelG.

Surely an interesting history behind that machine.

Not the DWM of World War 1, but the Nazi Deutsche Waffen-und Munitionsfabriken of 1936 and World War 2 owned by Wehrwirtschaftsführer Günther Quandt. (His son Harald was Doctor Goebbels step-son, and the only child of Magda Ritschel not to be murdered by her in the Führerbunker in 1945.)

As the machine is British, it's unlikely it was bought in a normal way by DMW. More likely it was sold to a firm in Denmark, Belgium, Holland, France, or Poland some time before May 1940 and then looted by the Nazis.

Despite spectacular early successes, Nazi Germany was in deep trouble by the end of 1941 and found it increasingly necessary to use whatever came to hand, most of it stolen or bought under unfavourable forced terms. This machine was allocated to DMW, I guess during the early middle war period because it has a fancy Asset Plate. By the end materials were too short for such fripperies.

Whether the machine was taken to Germany or not is unknown. Though equipment was often removed, firms in conquered territory were also forced to work for the Nazis.

Dave

I've just examined the Lathes.co Denbigh section again, and its text reveals this:

"Long a common practice in many spheres of industry, Denbigh also made batches of un-branded milling and other machines for distribution by third parties. ... some ... millers differed from the regular Denbigh specification with some obviously ... to a customer's particular requirements."

(ack. Tony Griffiths)

None of his illustrations, apparently all from catalogues, show the left-hand drive, single-slotted table though some captions refer to that under photos of machine with clearly, 3-slot tables (as mine has).

Rainbows' rescuee might have been exported legitimately to Germany, before Hitler came to power or at least before any such exports stopped. Although not giving dates, lathes.co does state the H-series milling-machines were produced from pre-WW2 onwards.

My reasoning:

".... stolen by an englishman circa 1918. "

Too early for Denbigh H-series mills although Denbigh and DWM were both long established by then.

So what does Wikipedia tell us? Firstly that the name-plate was not a Nazi-government armaments organisation but a commercial company heavily involved in supplying the armed services except between 1922 and the later 1930s. It had been founded as a gun-maker, in 1896. ("Waffen" is a military, but not Nazi, word.)

According to that Wikipedia article the German firm was banned from armaments production after WW1 (though still did in small, secretive ways). After a period of take-over and re-naming, it reverted to its original name in 1936, in Third Reich days; though it had become Quandt-owned in 1929.

'

So when that milling-machine Rainbows found was actually made, and where it has been all these years, is still something of a puzzle, not least because Mr. Griffiths tantalisingly does not tell us when the model was first made - except that the first, the very basic little H1, was created in the 1920s. Nor does he say when Denbigh was established. Maybe you have to buy one of his catalogue facsimiles to find out more closely!

Piecing things together, I suggest this example, which looks capable of being restored to fully serviceable condition, could have been a legitimate export to Germany in the late 1920s or early 1930s before the DWM name was revived. The DWM plate could have been added later.

The name-plate is not of a Third Reich organisation as such, leaving two possibilities if the firm at some stage had bought the machine new and not looted it in WW2 from an occupied land.

DWM may have owned and used the milling-machine all along, later possibly helping arm the regime; or had sold it but left their asset-plate on it, during the company's inter-War upheavals including the munitions ban.

'

To summarise, this machine could have been bought innocently by former-DVM in the 1920s or early-30s, between the machine's introduction and Quandt eventually reviving the name.

Since the DWM plate/s (I think there is one on both sides) are where Denbigh embossed its trade-mark, but not name, and given the above Denbigh marketing details, it's tempting to wonder if any name or mark lies below it or them. The plates may have been old ones that had languished in a store for that gap of up to about 14 years.

'

After WW2 what had been DWM became a railway rolling-stock builder under a new name with the same DWM initials. What became eventually left of it, became absorbed into an Austrian firm now making robotics equipment.

'''''

While at it, I went and re-measured the table screw on my Denbigh H4. Yes, it is of 6tpi, not 4mm lead, eventually confirmed after inconclusive attempts with a DTI, by measuring longer distances by pencil-mark and a word-processing rule's twelfths-inch scale. (24 turns of the handle, which has no dial, moves the table 4".)

From above, it's possible this odd pitch was to special order - for the printing industry perhaps?