Sensitive Drills - Help with Identity and other Questions

Some years back I acquired a few sensitive drill presses.

They are all in good working order but I have only really used the one on the the right, a Champion No1, which has given me around 8 years of service.

Nowadays, I largely use this-

I would like to renovate the larger of the machines (more questions about that later) and would be grateful if somebody could identify it. I would like to know the original colour.

It's a solidly built piece of kit, even over-engineered for its 1/4" capacity.

It has a heavy brass handle and an oiling pot on the top bearing. Everything runs nice and smoothly.

Anyone any ideas?

Steve

This is the smallest drill. The base is missing.

It is operated by turning a knurled brass knob which is geared to the larger wheel and lever mechanism. There is a return spring. Very sensitive and smooth action but a tad counter-intuitive as the gears reverse the direction.

The casting are some sort of light alloy and the column is 9/16" so its Imperial. The table is brass with a threaded spigot and a tapped casting for a very fine height adjustment. There is about an inch of adjustment this way. The drill came with a single 1/16" collet

I'm hoping to rehabilitate this and put it into service for horological uses. With a spade drill bit, it should be ideal for spot drilling small parts after marking out.

I would be very interested if anyone knows the identity of this machine. Maybe it was a kit of castings and parts?

Steve

I can't identify their makes but the colours they are may be original, perhaps faded. Find a corner unlikely to have been damaged by wear or oil, and gently scrape a small patch to see if there is any sign of a different colour between the primer and present top-coat.

There might be a flatting layer on the casting itself, not necessarily the same colour as the primer..

Thanks Nigel, I will try a bit of scraping.

It's hard to see from the photos but it looks like it was painted in the dark. Nuts and the oiling pot are covered in thick green gloop.

I'm not too bothered about authenticity when it comes to the colour but I would like to see an original one.

It might suit a Myford green!

Steve

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I am sure that I have seen that very distinctive base casting before … but I’m blowed if I can remember where.

MichaelG.

That base casting is distinctive. Quite a small footprint and the drill is top heavy. Very unstable unless it is screwed down.

There's a book to be written about how machine tool colours changed over time!

Early machine tools often came with Corinthian pillars, gothic arches, bright colours and gold leaf. Didn't last long because factories were filthy, so Black rapidly took over - very suitable for cutting cast-iron. Black was favoured until just before WW2, when shades of grey gradually became fashionable. After the war, Blue and Dark Green started to push grey out, then lighter greens etc. Bright colours like yellow appeared in the late 1950s. Older machines sometimes have evidence of 3 or 4 paint changes. Today's Machine Centres seem to be mostly White.

Sensitive Drills are a Victorian design, and if there was ever a patent, it must have expired in my grandfathers time because the style was extremely common. They could be made by virtually anybody, including home-made - Rolls Royce to Bertie Bodger! May not even be possible to identify the nationality. Over the decades many were made and exported from the UK, and later many were imported from almost any country with a smidgen of engineering capacity. The Victorians invented unbranded goods for retailers to slap a label on, and the British press from about 1890 onwards is full of complaints about the country being flooded with cheap German, French, Belgian, Spanish, and USA tat!

Dave

Station road steam Sold this drill last year, it looks to be much like your’s, the name remains a mystery but it appears to have some additional features.

Mike

Is it Westbury's? ..did ?Blackgates used to do it? ..or Reeves ..I can still 'see' the line-drawn ad that used to run in ME/?MEW

*up until a few weeks ago Reeves still had the Workshop Tools drawings up, but now they've gone..

Edited By DiogenesII on 01/07/2023 12:01:01

I thought Reeves, but my friend has one built from their castings in the 60's and it has a much more substantial base casting than the one pictured. But there could have been variations over the years.

I've got one of the small Champion ones left to me by a good friend and mentor, lovely little machine, one of my most treasured possessions, drill holes well too!

Dave

Thank you Mike, that's the one!

I've been looking for pictures of this for years.

I wondered about the flat at the rear of the base, it must be to accommodate the drive weird pulley array on the back. Looks like some sort of flat belt drive.

They are no holes drilled in the my base to fit the attachment. Maybe it was an optional extra with a kit of castings? Mine came with a spare pulley as well.

The other major difference is the return spring. Mine uses an extension spring and a lever.

This machine seems to have a compression spring enclosed in a brass tube and a lever in different positions and a shorter handle at the rear so it doesn't foul the column on adjustment. All in all, a better, more compact design than mine.

I do like the colour though and I'll use the photos as a guide for restoration.

Do you happen to remember what it sold for?

Cheers

Steve

Edited By Steve Crow on 01/07/2023 12:58:31

Hi Dave, I agree with the Champion. It was my first drill press and for a few years, my only power tool.

When I first got it, I had to make a drive system for it but that involved drilling holes for which I needed a working drill press. Catch 22.

In the end I attached a large round cast iron casserole dish lid to the pulley system to act as a flywheel and powered it by hand. It took hours to drill 6mm holes through 10mm aluminum but eventually I had a powered pulley system on the go!

Steve

I've just seen that Station Road Steam have got a Champion No1 up for sale at the moment.

Not a bad price with a motor considering what I've seen asked on Ebay. Don't like the way the drive belt is arranged on the photo though.

Steve

Hi Steve, that weird flat pulley array you mentioned, was common in industry where many machines were driven by line shafting. In the one in the photos, the flat belt would be between the two prongs, and one of the two pulleys would be a free wheeling one, so when the operator wanted to stop his machine, the belt would be shifted onto the free wheeling one with those prongs. In this way, each machine could be started and stopped individually without stopping the line shafting, which would be driven by just one motor or an engine.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 01/07/2023 13:35:21

Hi Steve, I guess the belts are like that, because either the motor could not be reversed, or whoever assemble it, didn't know how the reverse it, or they just didn't know how it should be arranged.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 01/07/2023 13:39:22

I have a set of Castings fir something similar and my son has the finished article and very nice it is too. This version is counterbalanced not spring return and motor is mounted similar to GHT pillar tool albeit a bit larger . I also have the original Indian ink drawings on tracing paper dated 1975. They were drawn by a friend of mine now sadly gone.

Hi, this is my father's one that he had in his shed back in the 1940's.

This is how it looked when I refurbished it, and mounted it with an electric motor, making it all one unit, which can be moved anywhere it's needed.

I still use it at times for light drilling work. This is a Bonds Maximus drilling machine from around 1930/40.

Regards Nick.

Hi Steve, I am sorry I don’t know what the selling price was as I came across it after it was sold. I suppose Station Road Steam might tell you if you drop them an email. I would tend to agree with you that the fast and loose pulley setup would be an option and maybe be an indicator that this may have been built from a kit. The differences between the machines may be an owners mod at any time in history or maybe the design was modified during the production life. As Nick explains the fast and loose setup would be for a shop with line shafting. Today I think I would do the same as Nick and power the drill from its own motor and this could be started and stopped when required. Motors do have a recommended number number or starts per hour but in a home workshop this is unlikely to be an issue.

Mike

I have a similar drill, I bought it from a club auction many years ago, it was incomplete - only a base, column, table and spindle with a chuck.

I was about to make a Geo Thomas one, so instead incorporated some of his ideas into mine.

It was as far as I can remember a similar colour to what it is now. I guessed it was a home made from casting design but that is only my guess.

Richard B.