LATHE:-
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A few years ago when I was in Germany but with my house here in Holland, I found an opportunity to buy a metal turning lathe – of unknown origin, I only obtained the basic measurements, extremely cheaply and since I had been thinking of a lathe for some time I thought at that price it was worth a bet. I never saw it, but I felt by hearing the fellows' voice over the telephone (from England) that the man was as good as his word so I went ahead and bought it, and it was shipped to my father where it stayed until I had it shipped over here back in Holland. I asked my father *not* to do any restoration or fixing or whatever, and I thought that might make for an interesting and educative exercise.

PREPARATION:-
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Well, it was educative indeed, I fully dismantled the machine once in the workshop, cleaning every part and where necessary effecting the odd repair, the re-assembled it and gave it a coat of machine paint. Once that was done, I made quite a number of extra tools and accessories for it, and also bought some further chucks (the one with it was rather… not the best!) which meant I had to turn and thread some backplates for these using the stand-alone faceplate. Despite the black nose (mine, that cast-iron!) after they were done then I made two new toolposts and a rear post for parting-off, a few 'extras' like rotating die-holders for the tailstock (MT1) and a lot of the usual tooling. I have milled a new cross-slide, slightly longer than the old original which had been 'bashed' a bit with the usual arguments with the chuck(!) which runs on the V-slide of the saddle, which itself runs on the V-shape slide of the bed. I've also added a DRO readout for the X-travel of the saddle, reading both metric and imperial, and two oilers for the spindle in the casting in place of the (open) hand-dripped fillers.

QUESTION:-
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This completed, I found it a good machine for my needs, and indeed it has been in regular use since that time to the extent that it is probably time to give it a bit of another clean-up and machine-paint it again. The one question I have tried to find the answer to is exactly what this machine is!!! I know it came from the sellers' father (and the seller was quite older than I was) but not much more than that, and here I would ask your assistance or pointers you may know of in establishing what machine it really is.

It has a Morse Taper 1 both in the headstock and tailstock, the nose thread is 7/8" with 9 TPI, centre height is 82mm or 3-1/4", the bed ecluding gap is 590mm or 23-1/4", the gap is 70mm or 2-3/4", and it has a backgear for a reduction of 6:1 rotational speed (although these gears may be changed).
In use with the existing belt drive and pulley-wheels and the motor I have it gives speeds of 450, 720 and 1152 RPM plus (with back-gear reduction) 75, 120 and 192 RPM.

On the bed casting there is (see the attached pictures) a stamp with "MA 109" impressed on it, and lower on the casting there is the line "MADE IN ENGLAND". A number of different change-wheel gears are present for thread-cutting using the leadscrew which I've only used a couple of times but it's also useful for slowly turning to diameter towards the chuck (next extra I'll make when I get a round tuit is a stop that'll disengage the leadscrew drive mechanically).

SO – Finally, would you have any idea whatsoever of the background to this lathe, it's maker, or any other observations you might have? Photos are in the "my album" section of my profile.

With my friendly regards – F.C. Trevor Gale.

Thank you very much indeed for the extremely fast responses, most unexpected but very much appreciated.

Ady1 / Hopper:-

(a) The carriage stop on the headstock front is original, also as far as I could determine when I was in the process of dismantling the lathe during my refurbishment of it. It arrived complete with maybe many decades of swarf, dust, rust and so on, luckily also with quite a lot of oil and grease around which meant that it hadn't suffered much if any internal corrosion damage.

(b) Some details do look more like a Myford ML1-series (I've looked at the links you've posted and they show *very* close similarities to my machine) apart from the tailstock-end support botls. I wonder how much 'cross-fertilisation' there was even in the direction of Myford in the very early pre-war years?

(c) I am still intrigued as to the origin and/or the significance of the "ML109" stamping on the machine casting, a similar positioning I didn't see in the other photos in the links I looked at.

It was interesting to see that the headstock oilers have been added almost in the same way as I chose to, with the original 'holes' being pre-tapped in a case, although I had to tap those holes in my machine but I did that when the dismantling was in process with the spindle extraced.

Thank you again, I shall follow up with interest!

— Trevor.