Project Myford Part The Second...

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Digging around the internet, the closest I can get to identifying the old man's lathe, is that it's a Myford ML4 dating to sometime in the 1930's. The clues I'm going on are the headstock design (Three-stud removable - not the very earliest type) and the centre-to-centre length of the thing, which all point to the ML4. I do know this was our second lathe at home (I can't remember much about the first) and so was purchased (very) used, by Dad in the 1960's (probably through the Birmingham Evening Mail Classifieds).

There's lots missing from it and Dad never got the screw-cutting side of things going - I've got a set of change wheels for it, but the banjo is missing one of the two studs and I don't possess any Woodruff keys either, but the stud is a simple bit of turning and tapping and the keys can be purchased on the Net, so we'll see - to be honest, I don't have a screaming need to be able to cut threads, but it would be nice to get the thing into a state where I could should the need arise.

The thing about the whole enterprise is that it's a nod to the old man, his brothers and the inestimable metalwork teachers at our Technical School, all of whom managed by some manner of osmotic magic to instil in me the basics needed to cover most technical challenges and the smarts to learn any skills as necessary to just 'do' stuff, rather than always just buying it in or paying some other bugger to do whatever it might be. And it's fun into the bargain, whilst keeping me sparky into my old age: so there you go...

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner25 June 2021 at 11:21

    Woodruff keys......mmmmm!:) I remember my introduction to the beautiful simple, elegant and complex little buggers and woundering about HOW they were made. I never followed it up but I think that making a profiled "billet" of them and separating out the individual keys to lapp to the correct width might be a way. I've not Googled it cos I like to think things through from what's inside my head! Echos of Peter Sarstead from the last phrase:)))

    ReplyDelete

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