Antique machinery scans

Some mighty wild stuff there, Boris. I like the What Were They Thinking page. A wooden portable forge?

Some interesting manufacturing shops:

Egad, look at the size of the Edison plants! There are tracks for three train lines going through there. Amazing. This site will be a time burner, for sure.

-- Inside every older person is a younger person wondering WTF happened.

I don't find that at all odd, but I have used a forge that was in a wooden box, I have also use a micro scale bronze furnace in a wooden box too, not really a big deal. I like the way that one completely closes up into a box though.

jk

Nice desktop wallpaper picture!

The GE plant is now a shadow of it's former self, BUT they still have the rail spur for shipping the big turbine parts out. Many of the buildings are long gone though.

When I was an apprentice I worked for a few weeks in a shop that had some of those machines. Most of them powered from overhead shafts which were driven by a big electric motor "out in the back". The lathe that they had me run had 1/128" inch graduations on the cross feed.

It was se cong generation and possibly more and had been in the same building since 1800-something.

(one of the owners had a 1936 Indian four cylinder in absolutely mint condition. Apparently he had bought it new and only rode it occasionally)

-- Cheers,

John B.

In 1980 I worked in a lumber mill machine shop that was equipped with many old machines. I used a radial drill press that was over 100 years old back then. The clutches for forward and reverse were cast iron cone clutches. There was a shaper that had been updated from overhead leather belt drive to electric motor drive with a 1940s vintage truck transmission. The lumbermill was full of old stuff. I remember replacing a 3 hp motor that was so heavy it took two of us to lift it. The motor was about 2 feet in diameter and maybe 8 or 10 inches thick with a 2 inch dia. shaft. Eric

Um, aren't we talking about different businesses here? Edison and Westinghouse were rivals, and Westinghouse owns GE.

Spur! Yeah, -that- was the word I was searching for yesterday. They were probably used to deliver rail cars full of coal for the forges and administrative office heat, too.

-- Inside every older person is a younger person wondering WTF happened.

Not hardly, and never. When Westinghouse existed, it and GE were rivals in the Power equipment fields.

BTW that plat (which was my work mailing address for 5 years) has the best zip code in the U.S.

12345 I still use it when some busybody marketing type in a store or on line, wants to know my zip code

jk

It used to be quite common to find old belt drive machines converted to electric motors. I remember some south Bend lathes converted that way. In fact I learned to splice flat leather belts - not much use for these these days :-)

-- Cheers,

John B.

Uh....well, in my basement there is.

But it's not overhead shaft drive. However, my 1917 Taylor & Fenn mill was. The conversion to direct motor drive looked like a big wart. d8-)

Ed Huntress fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Yeah... up until about a year ago, I had an F.E. Reed lathe very similar to the one in the scans, but a 14" model instead of a 21".

I stocked leather belting and alligator splices, because mine was flat belt drive both on the main drive, and the feed shaft.

And, I _did_ rig an overhead change shaft. It only seemed right... if you know what I mean. It just wouldn't have been 'right' to do it any other way.

It was a good lathe at about 75 years old, but I needed something a little more conducive to being converted to CNC... so I sold it to a very happy new owner.

LLoyd

The lathes I saw converted simply added a frame to the back of the headstock and mounted an electric motor that drove a 4 step flat belt sheave through a Vee belt between the motor and the flat sheave. A short flat belt ran between the two flat belt sheaves so you has a speed changing capability. Usually 4 speeds, with the back gear you had eight.

-- Cheers,

John B.

Old lathes never die. Their belts just develop jungle rot.

My mill was not so elegant. It had a big angle plate bolted onto the back of the column, just under spindle height, and a big old 1-1/2 hp induction motor was bolted onto the back of that. It looked like a giant goiter.

It had 3-speed pulleys on the motor and on the spindle, with a piece of cord wood for shifting the belt.

It really worked well. But it needed re-scraping; the American Precision Museum said it wasn't something they wanted; and I scrapped it last fall. 900 pounds of iron, in a smallish knee mill.