Martin

I don't know if you've come across this but Tony at (http://www.lathes.co.uk) is asking anyone who has one of these machines to contact him. I understand that he is a bit short of info. on this make and is anxious to fill in any gaps!

Norman

This body looks a bit like a granville one too, i wonder if they were making beds in the same place once upon a time.

Perhaps but i think the actual operation of the mechanism is hidden from view in those photos, The back gears operate on their own separate shaft which simply pivots on and off so that they can either be swung clear or have the bolt nipped up to allow the shaft to mesh with the gears, it would have to be designed this way in order to allow for fine adjustment of the quality of the mesh. I can see why you'd think parts of it are homemade but the gears themselves look original to me, they have the distinctive aged surface, either that or they've been taken from another machine.

A backgear is also a more common feature on older lathes, this was a way of allowing for users who wanted more than a simple selection of speeds, some of which did not suffice for large diameter turning work, so a simple compound gear train produces the reduction needed, and quite convenient to setup.

This feature seems to have died away on modern home use lathes, perhaps it was too labor intensive to meet demand so they stopped it, nothing really wrong with it and nothing has really "stolen" the provision it makes for slow turning by superseding it. So whys it gone? My own machine still has a gear mechanism in the headstock but the reasons for this are for screw cutting and not plain turning.

For all that jabber it's still a fine looking thing though and handy at that, with it's counter shaft able to encorporate a grinding wheel too, i'd quite happily compromise the originality for some of the tasteful changes which quite rightly a user is free to do, thats what its all about.

Michael W