I would buy a 14 x 1.5mm tap and a disc of 6mm steel plate or cast iron and machine as required.

The jaws on chucks do wear and can be ground with the aid of a special "spider" as shown in this link (and others on Youtube)

**LINK**

Michael G thank you, I knew they had changed but only maintaining a passing interest in Cowells I was unaware of the "from what to what factor".

Robert Butler

On any lathe, making a backplate, once the tread has been cut, the plate can be reversed and the register machined.

The backplate can now be fitted "Right way Round". It should now be concentric to the spindle, so that the backplate can be faced, and the register for the chuck turned, to minimise ecentricity (or maximise concentricity- if you want to put it that way )

HTH

Howard

Fat fingers strike again!

Edited By Howard Lewis on 01/02/2022 16:13:10

Thanks MichaelG for posting the spindle drawing for the Cowells lathe. The drawing includes date and address of Cowells in Norwich.

This interested me since I have never seen reference to the original firm before (going back to 1950s) although the 'Horsford Ironworks' was still standing when last I looked. Web searches have never elicited the origins of the marque – even Tony at lathes.com (Buxton) only details the current Cowells company.

My father served some of an apprenticeship at the original Cowells, disrupted by wartime. He recounted a story of the firm purchasing govt. surplus nuts and bolts which needed sorting from their packaging in old oil drums – not nice in the 1947 winter. One drum served as a crude paraffin heater !

Anyway thanks for updating my awareness of another historic toy.

Regards, Les

I'm not sure if the company was around prior to the lathe but the origin of the lathe design is a tale of its own. I think a lot of it is on Tony's site but you may need to hop around a bit.

The lathe design was the Perris lathe before it became Cowells. Brian Perris died in 1976 and Cowells took over the design and started selling it soon afterwards – initialy pretty much unchanged but over time things evolved, for example the headstock casting, handwheels and most obviously the current cast base.

The antecedents are reckoned to include the Flexispeed Meteor, Simat and then the Perris. Personally I struggle to see how to turn this into a set of evolutionary steps From Flexispeed to Cowells and in fact it's not as simple as that. I think that several of the designs were available at the same time from various companies in Norfolk. The Wexler Hector is another one that has strong connections – the bed design is very different but they share a lot of parts in common with the Cowells. I've even have a sales flyer with the Hector badged as a 'Cowells 100E'. As far as I know this particular badging did not get beyond the sales flyer.

Also bear in mind that there is a 'Cowell' shaper – this is another company entirely.

I also have an early Cowells lathe with the 14 X 1.5 mm mandrel purchased about ten years ago. It came without very many accessories, until someone decided to sell many accessories with this spec of mandrel. Having collected them, I decided to check the lathe over as the mandrel bearings had been remade after one of the bearing caps had been fractured. This was the first time I had ever done this, and the results were not good. The dowell pins in the headstock had been filed – not a good sign. Then the alignment was not correct, the mandrel was pointing up and to the rear. So I checked it again and then again the following day. No changes could be seen, so I took the head stock off the bed. On inspection I found two pieces of brass swarf under the head stock. I cleaned everything, obtained new dowell pins and reassembled the lathe. Realignment took well over an hour to complete, but at the end everything lined up to within about half a thou. I decided that this was adequate, if not perfect, sat back, wiped my brow and had a cup of tea.

I fitted the lathe on an old sewing machine stand, and it worked very nicely. The only problems are slipping belts.

The ins and outs of the Perris lathe, its variants, and the Cowells lathe seem to be complicated to put it mildly. The article ' Evolution of the Perris Lathe ' on the lathes.uk website is worth reading. How much is fact and what is opinion is difficult to work out. Brian Perris seems to have been killed in a car accident at the end of 1976. Within a year the PL90 lathe was back in production as the Cowells lathe. It says something that it is still with us.

The design was metricated very quickly, if only partially. Perris lathe dimensions are still used, notably on the mandrel, and there is one BA threaded hole on the cross slide. Care is needed when the smaller and less used screws have to be dealt with, or replaced.

Mike Potts.

Thanks for that. I think I have read that article before but it was good to read it again. I think it stops short of suggesting that the Perris is a descendant of the Flexispeed/Simat designs but I've seen it said elsewhere. I'd steer clear of saying so too – even the very first Perris on Tony's site has a slotted bed and tailstock design that looks like the current Cowells and completely different from the Flexi and Simat. The (worm?) power feed drive design on the Flexi and Simat is also something that as far as I can see never appeared on the Perris models.

Maybe there is a 'missing link' somewhere out there that will convince me otherwise.

I hadn't spotted the point before now that Brian Perris had a hand in the Hector, so clearly Norwich/Norfolk is not the only common factor.

A few other minor quibbles…

I don't think the colour scheme changed between Perris and Cowells as stated in the article – the tourquoise blue hammered finish of the early Cowells can definitely be seen in photos of later Perris lathes. IMHO it's the best of all the colour schemes. I always thought I was unmoved by such shallow cosmetic questions, but it seems not

Having the 'Cowells' name cast in was also not immediate – the early ones had a recess with a sticker in it and no lettering on the tailstock.

Most Cowells have a number stamped into the end of the bed… but I have come across at least one proveably early Cowells example that has no stamped bed number. AFAIK the Perris made lathes did not have a stamped bed number but I haven't asked many people so I could be wrong.

Still an excellent article though.

Sorry, I'm going on a bit… It's a bit of a pet subject of mine.