Engine Turning Machines

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

I recently found on a 2nd hand book stall a small booklet “Engine Turning Machines” – a catalogue issued by G Plant & Son of Harborne Birmingham – dates from before 1960 and probably late 1940s or early 1950’s.

Several machines are illustrated

one that shows the full complexity is the
14in Independent Straight line Machine

Another is the Small Type Rotary Machine

A Goniostat or Tool Sharpener is also illustrated

 

The Wikipedia entry has little detail of these machines – which appeared to provide decorative engravings on metal objects – probably these days replaced by plastic.

Any info re the probably long gone company + these machines welcome – were they actually common at one time

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Very interesting, Frances

… My family was in Harborne, but I don’t recall any mention of that firm.

MichaelG.

.

Ref.

https://ornamentalturning.net/machine_age_maker-plant.html

http://wilkesflutes.co.uk/guillouche.html

 

[Clive Brown 1Participant @clivebrown1]

There is a brief but interesting article on George Plant of Harborne to be found by a Google search. The firm goes back to the 19th. century. Engine turning and rose turning were widely used processes in the jewellery trade which was a significant industry in Birmingham, hence the connection. The jewellery quarter was centred around the Hockley area.

[Andrew CrowParticipant @andrewcrow91475]

The machine looks like an updated industrial version of the earlier Holzaphel ornamental turning lathe, still used and demonstrated by  The Society of Ornamental Turners.

As stated by Clive  above Birmingham had a large Jewellery and Watchmaking industry, so a more robust and easier method of operation would have required such a machine.

Andy

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Interesting thanks for posting

H

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

The second machine is a Rose Engine. Slightly different from an ornamental lathe. A little research will show you the key features making it easy to identify.

If you get interested there is a book ‘Ornamental Turning ‘ by famed model engineer Ted Walshaw.

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

The straight line machine looks like the Guilloche in Clickspring’s video:

Clickspring Guilloche video

 

Rod

Edit. Looking at the video again, both the rose engine and the straight line machines feature in the series of videos and a Harborne nameplate is shown.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Just in case anyone is unfamiliar, these machines originally put fancy patterns on watch backs, but ‘engine turning’ is often applied ornamentally to other items.

Different machine doing a flat plate:

Dave

[SillyOldDuffer]

On SillyOldDuffer Said:

Different machine doing a flat plate:

It might not be the best to put that machine in the same category as the others. That uses an abrasive action (a rotating sanding disk applied at regular intervals to the piece). On a smaller scale, a wooden dowel charged with valve grinding compound can be used in a drill press. A lot of aircraft engine cowels were finished in a similar manner.

The finish shown is often used on stainless steel sheet; an alternative is a ‘brushed’ finish, and the machine perhaps more belongs with that, at a lower level of technology than an engine turning item.

To me, the important difference between the machine pictures in the first post and an ornamental lathe is that the first machine is for production operations on multiple parts (the watch cases). Once set up, it would not need a skilled operator: just a machine attendant to load and unload parts.

[PeteParticipant @pete41194]

That looks like a very interesting book Frances.

I’ll try and add the little I might know. Today the term engine turning doesn’t mean the same thing as it was once used for ornamental or those guilloche straight line machines. I guess technically it’s still correct and that’s how your book describes it, but it creates confusion about what’s actually being described without further context. Dave’s last picture of what’s meant today by engine turning or it’s sometimes described as jeweling by gun smiths is a completely different, much simpler and easier process since very good work can even be done using little more than a pillar drill, a flat faced wooden dowel of the correct diameter, abrasives and some basic spacing marks. A mill makes it even easier for the regular spacing and swirl overlaps. I’ve done a little of it, and it’s simple, but not quite as intuitive as one would think for some of it. For the best effect, the work piece needs to be highly polished first, and the abrasives should never be wiped off. Instead they need to be washed off so the surface isn’t affected by straight line scratching any wiping would cause. For the best results, how much down feed pressure is applied and for how long almost to the exact second is also highly important to get the same depth and level of light reflection from each swirl mark in the metal. Any minor errors in technique show up as something that’s instantly and easily noticeable. Engine turning by today’s definition does have one thing common to it and ornamental turning or straight line work. They all use the light reflections in the same way to catch someones attention. So in my opinion, there loosely related, but still not the same thing since straight line or ornamental turning uses in general much deeper cuts and much more precision.

For any that don’t know of them, there were also geometric chucks. As an example, visualize the usual line drawing of what a snow flake crystal can look like. Those Geometric chucks can allow something much the same plus thousands of different designs with even more complexity to be cut into dense hardwoods or softer metals in one single and continuous line. That T.D. Walshaw book Bazyle mentioned has a pretty good description and line drawings of how a two stage geometric chuck works. Ornamental turning as a craft was invented sometime around the 1500’s and got progressively more expensive and complex. It started out as mostly a hobby for the ultra wealthy and royalty. It’s generally thought that a decently equipped ornamental lathe cost roughly the same as what two new modest to average sized homes would during the same time period. Later on one common use for those rose engines, ornamental lathes, straight line machines and those geometric chucks were all used before cnc for the printing dies producing high value bonds, money and even post office stamps in most countries as an attempt to prevent counterfeiting. To make it even tougher, small added hand engraved details plus multi stage dies that fit tightly together that also used different dye colors on each die segment during the printing process were also fairly common. I believe most or maybe all of the famous Faberge eggs have some evidence that all of this type of equipment helped to produce some of the intricate designs on them. For some higher priced goods and jewelry, watches etc, straight line and rose engine designs seemed to be fairly common in the mid to late 1800’s and even into the early 20th century. Only for the very wealthy of course, but today’s high end mechanical watch making has started a resurgence in the use of this equipment that’s now quite rare, hard to find and expensive when you do. A well equipped Holtzapffel ornamental lathe recently sold in a U.S. auction for roughly $250,000.

Rose Engine lathes were also built with one or two extra motions our lathes can’t do. They used rosettes or more descriptive, multi lobed cams attached to the spindle and the head stock could rock the amount the different cams had for lobe design and the high and low offsets each of those different shaped rosettes had. Some rose engine lathes could also follow cams that forced the lathe spindle and work piece to move back and forth in a lateral direction. A pumping action would be used by ornamental turners to describe it.

The Lathes UK site, https://www.lathes.co.uk/page21.html has a fair amount about the equipment and tooling accessories multiple manufacturers produced under the heading of Ornamental Turning. But I’ve not found much about those straight line machines anywhere other than a few YT videos and some very short written descriptions. Ornamental turning and how it’s done is also fairly strange for whatever reason. It’s either appealing and interesting to some, or and it seems for most, it isn’t.

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

Thank you Pete

I did look at the Lathes pages but they didn’t cover these specialised machines though they did have some interesting pages + references for the older ornamental turning lathes.

I’ve scanned the 18 page booklet and will probably offer it to SMEE library when i get to a lecture in September.

[PeteParticipant @pete41194]

SMEE eh, I’m impressed.

I’m not a member, but one possibility for information. The U.K. based Society of Ornamental Turners (SOT) apparently has an extensive collection of information. But it’s only accessible to the members. If any place has it or would know where to find more about the rarer and specialized machines or equipment, they would.

Google as good as it sometimes is, has a built in language barrier or flaw for the user in it. Or it does for the simple ways I know how to use it. Some years ago I started thinking about that and why I never got results from other parts of the world about machining or model engineering. Google will only search for and in the language the search terms are based on. Searching on places like Youtube is exactly the same. But using Google translate in multiple different languages for some key search terms got me hits on a surprising amount of forums, websites etc from all over the world. Unfortunately I found it a pretty slow process with the constant translations needed. That’s the back story.

I’d guess since much of this equipment was in use over most of Europe and elsewhere for a very long time, or at least until more modern methods or peoples tastes changed. There’s probably excellent sources of older information and drawings about this now rare equipment than we’d usually find by searching only in English. Google Translate is getting better, but I’ve found it’s still not great for the more technical terms. But as long as you already understand a bit, it can usually be figured out. As a tool for translating normal day – day conversations, it’s probably ok to fairly adequate. There’s a French only and I think mostly hobby level website called Usinages? I do know they have a massive collection of scanned user manuals for mostly European produced machine tools. Somewhere there has to be a lot more information about this equipment, and especially those straight line guilloche machines.

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