Lathe

I got mine from a farm sale auction for £25 A very old Drummond Round Bed Lathe, the forerunner to the Myfords.

I had so source a motor for it as it was just the bare machine but somewhat of a bargain. It does all I ask of it, which is not very much.

This is like mine Antique Churchill/Drummond 'round bed' lathe Manufactured between 1906 & 1920? . | eBay

But I don't have the stand. Orginally there would have been a treddle on the stand to drive it.

I didn't think they were worth that much.
 
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Spend quite a bit of time poking around on the web, especially on YouTube. Channels like Ade Swash and Steve Jordan are a mine of info. I picked up a Myford ML7 in the spring, barely used, for 700. Not a lot of tooling but plenty to get me going, so here are reasonable deals out there. One problem is that a lot of people have been re-evaluating with Lockdown so this kind of stuff has been flying off the shelves.
I f you’re going ‘Chinese’ then Warco is the way to go. They check everything over before selling, but just like the rest they have supply chain problems at the moment.
 
ProDave said:
I got mine from a farm sale auction for £25 A very old Drummond Round Bed Lathe, the forerunner to the Myfords.

I had so source a motor for it as it was just the bare machine but somewhat of a bargain. It does all I ask of it, which is not very much.

This is like mine Antique Churchill/Drummond 'round bed' lathe Manufactured between 1906 & 1920? . | eBay

But I don't have the stand. Orginally there would have been a treddle on the stand to drive it.

I didn't think they were worth that much.
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They do not usually fetch that much and it is missing bits and tatty.
 
DownWest said:
They do not usually fetch that much and it is missing bits and tatty.
Click to expand...
Yes at least mine was complete, in fact it came with a box of bits inclusing loads of gears, a face plate (as wellas the 3 jaw chuck) a set of spanners and quite a few cutting tools. My BIL has the long bed version of the Drummond round bed lathe.
 
Chinese lathes are better than people think for small work, particularly aluminium. As others say some great YouTube channels. There is one that shows how to set up a chinese Clarke type lathe and how to use it
 
A mate has a Chinese milling machine from Arc eurotrade. Maybe not one for the tool snobs, but it's earned its keep.
I think they do lathes as well.
 
Drummonds of Guildford were a very important machine tool manufacturer, who made lathes for industry as well as for amateurs. I have, but sadly cannot now find a little book describing early machine tools of interest to amateurs. It shows that the round bed lathe derived from Drummond's ambition to sell a lathe for £5. Their other machines illustrated in the book ranged from well pre WW1 3 1/2 inch machines of varying designs, some quite sophisticated up to a 5 or 6 inch centre height machine built to industrial use standards. They also made shapers and grinding machines. I believe that it was a large Government order for cylindrical grinding machines that caused them to licence the M type to Myford's of Beeston (Nottingham) who manufactured them for the Admiralty, and in the process learned how to make a good machine.

I have a WW2 vintage Myford- Drummond M type, which I obtained in a pretty sorry state. The mandrel had been damaged and the bed abused. I had the bed re-ground and made a new mandrel 1/8" larger on all external diameters with a Myford size thread and register, and bored out the bearings to suit. In my old workshop, before I had the South Bend it was the machine of choice for cast iron work. Bear in mind that its original design pre-dated WW1 and that its final form dates from about 1930 the M Type is a surprisingly good tool. I have attached a page scanned from a reprint of the 1930 manual which shows just how sophisticated the headstock was and how good its bearing adjustment was, compared to most small lathe makers who just used split parallel bearings that needed shim adjustment, in some cases only one sided.


Scan2021-01-13_143402.jpg
 
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Charlie Boy said:
Spend quite a bit of time poking around on the web, especially on YouTube. Channels like Ade Swash and Steve Jordan are a mine of info. I picked up a Myford ML7 in the spring, barely used, for 700. Not a lot of tooling but plenty to get me going, so here are reasonable deals out there. One problem is that a lot of people have been re-evaluating with Lockdown so this kind of stuff has been flying off the shelves.
I f you’re going ‘Chinese’ then Warco is the way to go. They check everything over before selling, but just like the rest they have supply chain problems at the moment.
Click to expand...
Re Warco and other imported Chineses lathes and mills. The Chinese generally turn out machines that are pretty accurate, but don't expect Warco or any other importer to have done more than basic checks. The standard of machine assembly in the Chinese factories is pretty poor. Machines are frequently left with casting sand and swarf from assembly operations inside them. Lathe headstocks and gearboxes need to be completely stripped and cleaned out before any new Chinese lathe is put to use. See this page Model Engineer and click on the photos in turn to see what horrors one buyer found in a pretty expensive Warco geared head lathe. 38 years ago I bought a Taiwanese milling machine from Warco, and had to clean casting sand from the head. Current Chinese standards are no better.
 
I too have come across similar to to Norman, A new college warco lathe that had handles with pre stripped threads & whose 4 jaw chuck was mounted so badly that it ran 2.5mm out of true. At 18 months old it showed more wear than the 50 year old Colchester Bantam it replaced.
An Optimum lathe (same factory as warco & seig) that kept crashing its gears. Maintenance contractor said there was nothing wrong with it. Yet when i took the cover off the headstock i found that the pins locking the gear selectors to their shafts had never been fitted at the factory.
You get what you pay for.
 
I've used lathes and milling machines in my work to make pump and machine parts, and I have both wood and metal lathes in my home shop, but...

... I have not heard in this thread any mention of common boat-related uses. I'm sure I have used a lathe for something over the years, but I can't place what it was or that it was in the last few years. It has to be the least used powertool in the shop. Yes, there are things I could use it for, but nearly always I can accomplish to sufficient precision with a drill press or some other combination. I can think of no up-coming project that calls for a lathe.

Please suggest uses that recommend such a tool to a sailor, short of overhauling propulsion machinery for which critical parts are no longer available. I'm sure there are followers that are curious.
 
I use mine quite a lot for all sorts of things, some are boat related some not!
Last year it made several sets of custom stainless rowlock pins for rowing boats. Then it was repairing a part for an anchor winch.
Last week it was in use machining dies for a 12 ton hydraulic bending machine for a one off job forming steel frames for a vintage powerboat, this week it was machining the axle & wheel mounting for a hurdy gurdy musical instrument.
If you make & repair things a good lathe is always handy.
But then a good workshop is handy too, years of being a self employed boatbuilder taught me that often it was quicker to do stuff myself than rely on others, especially as everything i did was one offs. I have the lathe, a milling machine, mig, tig & arc welding sets, wood bandsaw, circ saw & planer, Air compressor & tools. I never begrudge money spent on good tools!
 
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thinwater said:
I've used lathes and milling machines in my work to make pump and machine parts, and I have both wood and metal lathes in my home shop, but...

... I have not heard in this thread any mention of common boat-related uses. I'm sure I have used a lathe for something over the years, but I can't place what it was or that it was in the last few years. It has to be the least used powertool in the shop. Yes, there are things I could use it for, but nearly always I can accomplish to sufficient precision with a drill press or some other combination. I can think of no up-coming project that calls for a lathe.

Please suggest uses that recommend such a tool to a sailor, short of overhauling propulsion machinery for which critical parts are no longer available. I'm sure there are followers that are curious.
[/QUOTE

Lots of boat related bits over time. I occasionally make stainless railings and arches in tube, so machining the dies for a draw bender saved a lot of time & loot

One notable fix was a raw water pump. It started leaking the day the boat was due to leave. No spare available and the bearing was not stocked by the local factors.
So, back home with the bits and replaced the double bearing with a single sealed race and a phosphor bronze bush that I spun up on the old Sphere. Fitted it in the afternoon and off she sailed.
Delrin bushes for steering systems and the odd vane self steering unit (made one from scratch too.) Renovated a hydraulic steering ram, when no spares available. The seals were an odd size, so found some locally and machined the housings to take them. It is not just the availability of bits, but how long they take to arrive.

The Sphere was a freebee, given by the ex Chief Eng of the QE11 after I had done him a couple of favours, came with a mass of tooling too. That was 30 yrs ago and while a bit worn (it dates from the 40s, a copy of the US Atlas) it has saved loads of time and money, apart from the enjoyment :)
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I am a trade trained and qualified master fitter, turner and machinist.
My advice is that you go to night classes to learn how to use these machines.
Incredibly useful and fun to use, but they are also dangerous to the un-initiated. You will, or should learn techniques that stand you in good stead.
for example as an apprentice one of our tasks was to machine a perfect cube on a centre lathe. +/ - 0.01 mm was the allowable tolerance as I recall. Not an obvious thing to do on a lathe!

Secondly, you can now buy single to 3 phase Variable speed drives at almost reasonable cost.

ABB ACS150-01E-09A8-2 Pn 2,2kW, I2n 9,8A IP20

My BIL bought one through my contract electrician together with 3 phase 2,2 kw motor for his wood working machines. The limitation in NZ is the allowable current draw from single phase. My BIL is happy with the result as he gets more torque /power from motor than possible from an actual single phase and can vary the speed.. (3 phase motors are also a lot cheaper than single phase cos they are so much simpler!)

Have fun.
John
 
I used my lathe for quite a lot of components when building my boat. Currently modifying an outboard with an anti reverse kickup lock machining bushes and collars.

Machined the boss for a boat steering I made during the early lockdown.

This morning need to drill out some M6 fender washers to M12 it will be alot easier to use my lathe than my bench drill
 
John the kiwi said:
My advice is that you go to night classes to learn how to use these machines.
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Just a point of information. There are almost no night classes, practically anywhere in the UK. They were closed down over 20 years ago.
Our schools and colleges now generally lie idle in the evenings, most of the population are functionally illiterate when it comes to making things and the pleasure of doing it.


Can't say I do much with my small lathe but it comes in handy, although I also have motor bikes so that helps.

.
 
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thinwater said:
Please suggest uses that recommend such a tool to a sailor, short of overhauling propulsion machinery for which critical parts are no longer available. I'm sure there are followers that are curious.
Click to expand...

Some years ago I bought a micro lathe from Axminster Power Tools. As far as I could tell at the time, all the micro lathes were the same but with different branding.

I can't claim to know what I'm doing but I have used it to make boat related items out of plastics including UHMWPE and Tufnol. These include rudder bushes and spacers and bow rollers. I've also made a couple of items for use at home.
 
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