Wow that is a beast. A nice one. It is either very old old someone has perhaps fabricated it from bar stock and flat plate? Is the main body a casting or is it all bolted up from stock? Sorry, can't help with identification. But fascinated. Please keep us posted with your progress.

Definitely a home brew job, a lot of work to make it too.

Not sure how well it will clean up or perform but a good project to have a go at.

I think the hardest job will be to get any cutters to run true, the arbor is missing and the support bracket.

Good luck in making it a runner

Best regards Mick

Plasma-

Arbor missing? That look like a lathe chuck back-plate on the spindle, suggesting the builder was unable to make a conventional taper-fitted spindle or perhaps used an ex-lathe spindle.

Making a new arbour drop-bracket: I had to do that for a Centec mill. My method:

1. Completed the bracket's over-arm clamp arrangement. (The Centec over-arm is dovetailed but the method is adaptable to any over-arm form.)

2. Drilled the arbour hole just below size.

3. Clamped the embryo bracket to the over-arm and to a pair of angle-plates fitted to the table with plenty of T-bolts, so the hole was comfortably between the angle-plates and aligned with the spindle.

4. With a boring-head in the spindle-nose and the over-arm just slack enough to slide, gently bored the bracket to finished diameter, winding the table inwards to advance the cut along the bore.

I took only very light cuts and very gentle feed as the method does put a somewhat unfair stress on the machine; but it succeeded. I think I wound the handle with one hand while gently pushing the over-arm with the other, to relieve the load.

I have a small Denbigh horizontal mill that needs a new drop-bracket for its single, round-bar over-arm, and will use the same technique.

So I think this a way worth John Milton considering in restoring this machine.

You deserve to end-up with a good machine there, John

MichaelG.

We all look forwards to it being back in service!

Sorry, I've no photos, but I suggest you look on the Lathes.co web-site, find Denbigh milling-machines and study the Model M horizontal.

I cite these because I own a slightly simpler Denbigh H4 (also in the Denbigh " chapter &quot so can picture it in mind to explain here what I had in mind.

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I don't know how much you know about horizontal millers, nor quite what I'd not explained fully, so please bear with me if I start from first principles and repeat what's already familiar to you.

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On the Denbigh M photo, the over-arm is the heavy bar projecting forwards from the top of the machine. What I called the drop-bracket is that hefty casting dangling from the over-arm's outer end.

On yours, it is the bar projecting from the vertical-slide, directly above the spindle.

The Denbigh is shown with its arbour, without a cutter, in place, and you can see its outer end runs in a bearing (probably just a bronze bush) in the drop-bracket.

This is analogous to the steady on a lathe, and supports the arbour against the heavy lateral loads imposed by horizontal milling.

The inboard end of the arbour normally has a standard Morse or other taper in the spindle nose, and is pulled in tight by a draw-bar extending back through the hollow spindle. It also means you can use drill-chucks (for drilling only, NOT milling!), boring heads, etc. with similar tapers.

Now, you machine seems to have, or had, a lathe chuck on its spindle, and what we don't know is whether it has a through-hole spindle with taper and draw-bar. If just a lathe chuck, you'd need an arbour with a plain rather than taper shank.

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Now to the nub of what I wrote above. Obviously, the drop-bracket centres need to match the over-arm to spindle centres, so the method I described was to give that.

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On most smaller mills like the Denbigh M or H-series, the over-arm can be slid backwards and forwards through its mounting holes (with its clamps slackened). The Centec has a dove-tailed slide but the principle here is the same. This meant that when I linked the table to the over-arm with the drop-bracket I was making, the over-arm slid back with the table.

On yours, the over-arm is fixed, so you will need to clean it to a good smooth finish and slide the bracket on that.

I would recommend you make the drop-bracket (assuming it's not already there among any bits and pieces that came with the machine) with either of two clamp patterns. The first, common on bench-drill columns, has two scalloped steel bushes on a draw-bolt. The other is the split-type clamp, as on the Denbigh machines.

You need clamp the bottom end of the bracket to the table in such a way you can drill and bore or ream it horizontally for the arbour bush. You could use two angle-plates with a sacrificial steel bar across the gap to support the bracket. Or clamp it on some way in the vice. Either way it all needs to be rigid enough not to spring or rotate under the cutting forces while also transmitting the table movement to the top of the drop-bracket so that can slide without shake along the lubricated over-arm. Ease the clamp just enough to allow it.

I would drill the bulk of the metal out first, before setting up as above.

Effectively this uses the milling-machine as a horizontal borer, but the secret of success is in the drop-bracket moving without springing under full control of the table – along the over-arm on your machine, with the over-arm on my Centec and Denbigh.

It looks as though it could be combination lathe and milling machine. With that chuck backing plate below what appears at first glance to be a milling spindle. Job could be held in the lathe chuck mounted on that backing plate, and a toolpost mounted in the vice or direct to the table below.

Or is the chuck backing plate mounted on the main spindle and the round bar above it remains stationary to act as the overarm on which to mount a steady for the milling cutter spindle below?

Some pics of the area behind the main column showing the drive from motor to spindle/s would possibly clarify.

Certainly an interesting machine. I wonder if it was ever written up in ME magazine?

Edited By Hopper on 23/06/2019 07:29:39

A pleasure John! I will see if I do have any photos of how I made the drop-bracket for my Centec mill (which I no longer have). I don't recall photographing the process, so can't promise it – and I've still to find out how to add images here.

An interesting idea, Hopper, that this is a combination machine – a rare but very useful beast, and there were some quite elaborate species of these developed over the years. It does look to me as your second suggestion: the projecting bar is an over-arm, not a shaft.

A gearbox in the column… yes, perfectly feasible, even if giving only two speeds as the handle suggests. This was common practice on horizontal mills.

Is that broken thread, the spindle nose? It's hard to see what happens at the register end, but is the thread actually on the same metal as the spindle or is it some sort of insert? If the only answer will be a new spindle I suggest you do make it as I'd described above – with through-bore and internal taper as well as the thread. The taper will probably have to be a Morse at that size, but it will allow using a range of tooling and collets.

The original builder might have used an existing spindle, perhaps from a scrapped lathe, or a new one sold as a spare for some make of lathe.

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John,

Two suggestions, if I may:

1. Get a decent 'flank drive' spanner [either ring, or socket]
2. Use PlusGas 'Formula A' dismantling fluid in preference to WD40

MichaelG.

Hugh –

Yes, Plus-gas was in red as well as blue cans. In fact I think I have one of each. Their were about 4 formulae until the one called " A ", in blue cans, replaced all; then in 2014 a new one called "Fast" appeared… in a black tin!