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I may be off base with this idea. The overall appearance of the lathe, style of the crank handles and the design of the apron and headstock bearings (semi-split tapered bronze bearings & style of adjusting nuts) looks like the lathe might be German in origin. The Germans built lathes using Imperial sized fasteners for sale in England (under labels from the sellers in England).It's a good, basic lathe and is all complete and does not look to have been abused. I am sure it will be capable of getting out some good work for you. Plenty of 'mystery' lathes are out there, no maker's name or means of identification on them. At this point, the lathe is quite old, and as long as the lathe is complete and in reasonably good condition, knowing the maker's name really serves no useful purpose.
Parts, manuals and other information probably have not been available since sometime before WWII for a lathe such as you have. As long as you have a good set of change gears for thread cutting, and a four-jaw chuck, that is all a person could hope for when they get an old lathe of this type.
Boxford lathe Model C. 240v Nice clean machine. Comes with a selection of tooling. 2 X three jaw chuck. 1 X four jaw chuck. Faceplate and drivers. Four way toolpost. Live and static centres. Morse adaptors. Tailstock drill chuck. Bar centre drilling attachment. New link belts. Spare smaller countershaft drive pulley for increased spindle speed.
I agree with Parts and Joe.the beds wrong for any Boxford or Southbend clone (not enough raised VEES) and like Joe I'm plumping for German, that back back gear is very Un -English, and the Continentals went for cantilevered beds on their lighter machines.If it has Imperial threads throughout, there was as Joe said a lot of interchange - especially with the Germans, or it could be WW1 reparation - (Germany was stripped naked,) the design copied with Imperial threads being used if it came to the UK. I also am inclined to think it was made in Germany, and that the tailstock is original. The German makers had a very distinctive way of building up the saddle/cross-slide/compound 'in the sand'.Generally, most German makes used a very thick, double walled apron, but your plain, single wall apron is very thin. However, I do see what looks like an interlock cam on the outside of the half-nut handle. This is a feature often seen on Fischer lathes with power feed. The compound is also a dead ringer for early Fischer lathes.
The rest of the details, however, seem different.Look around for any stamping on various parts of the lathe, particularly around any oiling ports.allan. I may be off base with this idea. The overall appearance of the lathe, style of the crank handles and the design of the apron and headstock bearings (semi-split tapered bronze bearings & style of adjusting nuts) looks like the lathe might be German in origin. The Germans built lathes using Imperial sized fasteners for sale in England (under labels from the sellers in England).It's a good, basic lathe and is all complete and does not look to have been abused. I am sure it will be capable of getting out some good work for you.
Plenty of 'mystery' lathes are out there, no maker's name or means of identification on them. At this point, the lathe is quite old, and as long as the lathe is complete and in reasonably good condition, knowing the maker's name really serves no useful purpose. Parts, manuals and other information probably have not been available since sometime before WWII for a lathe such as you have.
As long as you have a good set of change gears for thread cutting, and a four-jaw chuck, that is all a person could hope for when they get an old lathe of this type.Joe thank you for your info, it is indeed in a good shape cause it was covered with greese and dust so most of the parts, afte a very.very good cleaning where like new.almost.Tha fout jaw chuck is already on it but unfortynatly i do not have the gears.that is the reason i want to find out the model cause i want to fabricate the gears. Do you have, or can you borrow, a gear pitch gage? I'm betting 14 1/2 pressure angle, and the date no later than the mid fifties, but I'm far too often wrong.Once you know the pitch diameter and pressure angle of the gear at the far left end of the lathe, as Limy Sami said, then find the pitch of the leadscrew.With those three facts you can make a set of gears to cut a range of threads (including metric) by copying the thread data plate on any lathe with the same number of teeth on the output gear at the left end of the headstock and the same pitch on the leadscrew! Then figuring out from that data what #'s of teeth each gear needs you can figure the blanl diamter's of every gear you need to make, and duplicate the data plate from the other lathe.
If it is an inch leadscrew it is really easy. I enjoy making my own gears and assume others do too, but a gear house will doubtless make better gears. If they are 14 1/2 PA you can buy gears in America easily as well.
That back gear shifter at the RH end of the head stock is real unusual it seems to me. Here is what I've found in lathes.uk;(But the legs have 'Simonet' cast right in, plus the shifter is totally different.
Yesterday I found a couple more with that arraignment but didn't write them down and can't find them tonight, however, nothing that looks exactly the same.It's truly amazing the wide variety of lathe builders over the last century, but no one can keep track of them all. It is possible that you have the only lathe left by that maker. Do you have, or can you borrow, a gear pitch gage?
I'm betting 14 1/2 pressure angle, and the date no later than the mid fifties, but I'm far too often wrong.Once you know the pitch diameter and pressure angle of the gear at the far left end of the lathe, as Limy Sami said, then find the pitch of the leadscrew.With those three facts you can make a set of gears to cut a range of threads (including metric) by copying the thread data plate on any lathe with the same number of teeth on the output gear at the left end of the headstock and the same pitch on the leadscrew! Then figuring out from that data what #'s of teeth each gear needs you can figure the blanl diamter's of every gear you need to make, and duplicate the data plate from the other lathe. If it is an inch leadscrew it is really easy. I enjoy making my own gears and assume others do too, but a gear house will doubtless make better gears. If they are 14 1/2 PA you can buy gears in America easily as well.I do not have a gear pitch gage, is there some type of mathematical type to test the result?I think i am gonna change the lead screw and the nuts cause they are realy in bad shape.Is there any way to repair the half nuts?Is moglice a way to fix the threads?If thing get too expensive i'll eventualy go to cnc convertion.