OK Knowledgeable folks, anyone ever seen one of these before?
I picked it up in my local scrap/salvage yard yesterday and spent the evening cleaning it up. It stands about 12" high
The spike sticking out of the top left pulley wheel is actually on a taper, and fits either side; the end contains a tiny mounted point.
From what I can gather Julius Faber, from Stuttgart, was an early spectacle maker and had a few patents to his name, including the curved spring spectacle side ear restraints.
Very little on Google about this gizmo, but I'm guessing it was for boring holes in spectacle lenses, maybe for fitting arms and bridges directly to the lens.
Again guesswork, but maybe the elf cup at the front contained either coolant/lubricant for the glass drill, or maybe an abrasive compound if they were drilling with some sort of a soft lap.
There's no drill chuck with it, and no obvious means of fitting one, but the quill does have a blind taper.
The little cross slide is adjustable for both horizontal and angle. The brass carriage slides freely and has a fibre jig at the end, maybe to support the lens. The hole down the length of the cross slide is plain.
Directly below the quill, the pillar is made of either a fibre compound, or hard dark wood, and clearly supported the workpiece when drilling.
The adjustable detent is calibrated, both on the knurled wheel and also on the barrel itself.




There's a picture of a similar one HERE