Old metalworking books on-line

Thanks fer the link. Good stuff.

Lennie the Lurker

Joshua Rose, and "The Catechism of Steam", both in PDF. Excellent!

Michigan State University has been very helpful in hosting these images (it's been 4 years or so I think). If anyone out there has a similar book, a decent scanner, and inclination, I'd be happy to help with technical details, and if necessary the conversion to PDF. (Please ask--some details of the scanning process are not obvious, especially the format.) One of the books there was from a RCM reader that way.

Books need to be in the public domain (in the US, this means basically published before 1923--see

).

--Dale Grover

been 4 years or so I think).

I almost forgot, "The Advanced Machinist" is also included. Those MSU boys are on the ball!

Yep! I found it when I visited the site from the original posting. I already had the others, but I downloaded this (thank goodness I now have a T1 line, instead of that 56k frame relay. :-)

I spent some time going through part of it, including the section on threading with a lathe. I find it interesting what was and was not available on lathes at that time (e.g. around 1902):

Not available:

+ Threading dial

+ Compound

+ Calibrated cross-feed dials

+ 3-jaw and 4-jaw chucks.

+ No sign of follower or steady rests.

Available:

+ Quick-change gearbox (on some)

+ Multi-point threading tool, lever indexed, to cut a thread in multiple passes without infeed on the cross-slide. Each pass was cut with a different point -- each one narrower and deeper than the previous.

Of course -- all threads were cut with direct infeed, since there was no compound to set at an angle.

But vertical boring mills were already available and in use.

And -- they described both how to cut threads with hand chasers (no leadscrew), and with a leadscrew, with the chasers sometimes being used to clean up a single-point cut thread.

And -- they gave details for cutting square (not Acme) threads to a stop drill.

I would probably still be reading it, if it did not take so long to step from page to page. :-)

An interesting discussion comparing the 60-degree threads with the Whitworth ones, pointing out the benefits and disadvantages of each.

Enjoy, DoN.

Don - Oh, shut up. I get a 26k connection on a good day.

Leon - Thanks for the link. What I've downloaded so far looks great.

R, Tom Q. Remove bogusinfo to reply.