I bought a box of junk from an old time truck workshop closing down sale. Amongst the treasures included was this (pictured below) travelling steady.

It has several very distinctive features: the way the bolts engage with tabs on the ends of the brass fingers to adjust them. Most unusual though is that it appears to be made to clamp on to the back of the carriage dovetail for the cross-slide, meaning then the cross-slide can not be moved fully towards the rear.

There are no identifying marks other than the number 150 cast into the side of it. Which I spose could be 150mm, but the nuts and bolts on it are all Whitworth, so presumably it hails from the UK or here in Australia.

It measures 3.5 inches from the top of the dovetail to the centreline of the fingers. So if it is perched up on the lathe cross-slide dovetail, the centre height on the lathe must be somewhere around the 5 to 7 inch mark, maybe?

The dovetail is smallish, about 2.5 inches across.

Not much else I can tell you about it, so will post a few more pics.

There was a very Myfordish four-way toolpost in the box with it but the steady does not look at all Myford-like to me.

Anybody here recognize it?

I thought I might be able to adapt it to fit my old M-type Drummond but it would have to be completely butchered. I would rather find a good home for it, so if I knew what it fitted that would be a start.

I've looked on lathes.co.uk at all the Australian made lathes and see nothing like it and trawled around as much as I can in the English and European lathes to no avail.

Edited By Hopper on 08/03/2014 11:39:20

Or could it possibly be off some other machine tool? The old workshop it came from did not have much in the way of machinery though. All it had was an old valve facing machine, but this did not go with that at all.

Well thankyou all so much. I knew somebody on here must have come across this part before.

Yes indeed that looks exactly like the critter in the picture, even the right colour paint.

I've never seen or heard of this lathe before, so off to lathes.co.uk to find out what it's all about.

All I need to do now is find someone with a Drummond/Myford steady who wants to swap it for a Little John steady. LOL.