I’m sure there is a brief mention of this in Sparey’s book ” the amateurs lathe” I do remember seeing a ML7 fitted with a fabricated version of this for sale some years ago. Mr Sparey also designed a indexing device based around Myford changewheels, castings were at one time available for this. The Sparey gearbox was presumably the forerunner to the kit for the Machin gearbox available from Hemingway kits. Mr Sparey was evidently a bit of a character, he lived in a residential area and his neighbours took him to court to prevent him testing his model I/C engines in the middle of the night!

Edit. Just looked and there is a write up and picture of Mr Sparey ,the night terror himself, on the Lathes website under Third party and other gearboxes, along with some info on the box itself looks like he was on TV too. Wish they had interesting things like that on there now! I might be in a minority of one but I do find the history of model engineering and machine tools interesting.

Growing up in London I remember Bonds and Bassett-Lowke. Also Buck & Ryan at the top of Tottenham Court Road who sold Myford lathes.

Dave – I am with you on the history side. Edgar G Westbury was a very interesting person and a friend of Frank Whittle. As a civilian he ran the RAF training workshop at Cranwell before the apprentice training school moved to Halton.

JA

edit – I guess the gearbox was not an original Myford item but Garners, spotting a gap in the market. I wonder how many they sold.

See also his book, The Amateur’s Lathe.

His booklet, A Man and His Lathe deserves to be better known.

Thanks Michael

I must admit I don’t know how to create a link!

I believe that in the novel by Neville Shute ” Trustee from the toolroom” the main character was inspired by Edgar Westbury. from what I’ve read of ETW he was quite a remarkable man.

Dave

Have to agree about Mr Sparey’s A man and his lathe book, hopefully still available from TEE publishing, well worth a read.