Can you identify this travelling lathe steady?

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

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

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

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.

[WorkshopPeteParticipant @workshoppete]

Hi Hopper

From memory it looks like the steady from a Little John/Raglan lathe it is some years since I had one of these but I think the traveling steady was like yours. Peter

[WorkshopPeteParticipant @workshoppete]

Its is nice to know the memory still works and is not playing tricks. The older I get the more I question my ability to remember things accurately – more and more senior moments.

Peter

[WorkshopPeteParticipant @workshoppete]

Gray

I suppose that is some comfort. Its when you go for something and by the time you get there you have forgot what you wanted.

Peter

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

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.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Thanks again folks. I tracked down the Raglan Little John lathe's history and found it has a fan group on Yahoo. Seems like it was an expensive "premium" lathe in its day. The traveling steady is so rare, and so sought after by the cognoscenti that they are getting replicas cast and making their own.

I'm glad now I didn't cut it all up to try to make it fit the Drummond. Funny, a little voice in the back of my head told me to find out what it was before sticking the angle grinder into it.

[John BurridgeParticipant @johnburridge26484]

The Steady is a Raglan Little John's travelling steady.

Some one has said there are steadies being made.

I have made an enlarged fixed steady which takes up to 6 inch as is an enlarged copy of the original

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/RaglanMachineTools/photos/albums/1368661895

This is the link to the steadies on the site

[The EngineerParticipant @theengineer]

Hi

Do you still have the Traveling Steady for The Raglan Lathe if you have and not using it.

I would be interesting in Buying it, I have a Raglan which doesn't have one.

Or if you know anyone that as one please let me know.

David

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