Randa A/B ? Lathe Parts I.D Questions

[Richard S2Participant @richards2]

Acquired a box of age encrusted Lathe parts yesterday, sadly no Bed/headstock.

Spent some time online last night and narrowed this search down to a possible B.S.W. RandA 'A' brand.

I believe a few Members on here are owners of a few examples who could possibly offer some verification. If so, I would be most grateful.

Rather than clog this Topic up with images of rusty parts, I placed 3 images in the 'Workshop' section of my Album of some of the parts.

My primary questions are-

Can it be confirmed that this brand/model of Lathe carries the casting marks of 3 numerals prefixed by the letter 'L'.

The original colours appear to be a very dark greenish black with red 'T' slots and feedscrew channels. This is similar to the pristine original condition example on lathes.co.uk.

The apron on mine carries a plate listing Change Wheel/Thread permutations and no examples in my searches appear to have this.

I'll then set to and carefully clean these up and check their condition. I'm in no doubt the expection of locating missing parts to make a complete Lathe is a 'No Hoper', so they maybe of benefit later to someone else.

Thanks in anticipation.

[Richard S2Participant @richards2]

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Richard, the tailstock and the cross-slide do look like they would fit the RandA lathe, and if the change wheels just have one hole in them for a driving pin, they too might fit. Not sure about the apron though, as the shape looks a little different. The style of these lathes were fairly generic, just like todays mini lathes, which included Grayson. Winfield, and a few others, and even Myford had a look-a-like, but most of the raw castings seem to have been made by Pools. My fathers RandA B lathe was a dark blueish green before I cleaned and repainted it.

Regards Nick.

[Author]

Posts