This is how we haul the mail: Disclosing Manufacturing Details Contin...

[Dev Emch]

A while back, the topic of manufacturing disclosure came up and it was clear that some builders would rather not disclose what they have or where its located.

Here is an example of how the US companies do it. This is the public information disclosure page on machine shop capability for Northfield Woodworking who is now celebrating 84 years of CONTINOUS manufacture.

http://www.northfieldwoodworking.com/services/machinetoollisting.htm

Not bad guys! Keep up the good work.

[David Fried]

Dev,

I see they have several engine lathes listed. I have seen engine lathes for sale in the paper and wondered what is an engine lathe? Thanks.

Dave Fried

[Bruce Page]

David, “engine lathe” is the generic term for a metal working lathe.

Dev, I saw a Northfield in LA years ago, a work of art!

[Dev Emch]

Dave & Bruce...

An engine lathe is a metal cutting lathe that usually has a headstock, tailstock and thread cutting capability along with a compound carriage and thread cutting and carriage feed control tumbler gear box.

A toolroom lathe has many attributes found on an engine lathe but is usually small with a swing of about 9 to 11 inches and a distance between centers of about 24 to 30 inches. It is very useful in toolroom operations but not that useful in heavier operations such as turning a wood shaper spindle or planer cutter head. Here, the engine lathe shines.

An engine lathe of about 14 to 15 inch swing is a very handy tool to have. I have a very old engine lathe with a 19 inch swing made by LeBlond in about 1940 to 1950.

But let me warn you now. If you think turning wood is addictive, you have not turned metal. If you bring an old engine lathe home and begin turning metal, it will be impossible for anyone to drag you out of the shop! Its truely addictive!:p

By the way, my buddy Craig has a few lathes in his shop at www.antique-engine.com including a 19 inch LeBlond Engine Lathe, a 10 inch Atlas Toolroom lathe and a Lucas Horizontal Boring Mill or HBM. The HBM has bronze bearings and Craig restores vintage hit and miss engines as a hobby. So no new stuff here!

[Rob Will]

Dev,
My metal lathe is a South Bend (circa 1918). I purchased it from a neighbor who ran a repair shop that saw it's share of Model T's. Before they had electricity the power came from....you guessed it.....a Model T engine. It still has the original overhead power shaft and clutch. In the 1930's it was switched to an electric motor. I still run with that same motor. Nothing like the sound of the start winding bringing it up to speed.
Rob

[Dev Emch]

On Dec-8-1941, the USA became metal lathe central. It was not uncommon for farmers to have 9 inch bench mount metal lathes in their machine sheds. Often, you also found smaller milling machines like atlas MFBs.

South Bend had cranked out not thousands of lathes but rather hundreds of tons of lathes at the start of the war. These lathes were gathered and turned into lathe farms.

The super high quality lathes such as LeBlonds, Monarchs and Hendys, etc. were used to build more lathes and to build the super precision turnings. LeBlond exported thousands of lathes to England and some of the Rolls Royce Merlin Engine parts were made on Ohio Iron!!!

The less accurate and smaller lathes such as the south bends were used to make all sorts of items in these lathe farms. Items such as willys drive line parts to low precision tank turnings to mortar shell casings to bomb trigger parts to some gun parts were all made on these. Women were quickly recruited and trained to run these. Not being true machinists, they sometimes made mistakes like dropping four jaw chucks into the ways while running. Nonetheless, box after box after box of misc. parts came off these lathe farms which often were running three shifts.

So even though the south bend was not the rolls royce of american metal lathes, they were around during some of our more formative years and made massive contributions to US americana...... I also believe that they are one reason the US won that war! Pitted against some of the german machine tools, we didnt have a chance. But for every one german super precision lathe, there were over a dozen or more south bends and several of the more super precision lathes. We simply lathed the ememy to death.

And then look at the number of milling machines made including bridgeports as well as the heavy iron like cincis or kearney treakers. And how does this all relate to woodworking? Simple. The patternshops were running around the clock. The Olivers, Tannys, Wysongs and others were cranking foundary patterns as fast as the engineers could scribble designs onto cocktail napkins. The president of LeBlond was modifying stuff so quickly that the draftsmen had to mooch the envelopes, toilet paper or napkins from the machinists to complete the engineering drawings for the records. Patterns were hitting the foundary before the draftsmen were done with the drawings!

These were the golden days and anyone who dared compete with the US learned a bloody lesson. Lets hope these lessons dont get forgotten.

[Rob Will]

RR Merlin rocks! I had my picture made by a Merlin at the London Science Museum......sort of symbolic.....that Merlin sitting there on a quiet peaceful London afternoon.

Now I must show my ignorance, just what is a pattern maker? How does pattern making apply to the jointers that we talk about?

Rob

[Dev Emch]

Cast iron parts were often made with sand molds. These molds were casting sand sprinkled and rammed up in a cope and drag. Put the cope and drag together and you have a mold. The cavity is formed when sand is rammed against a pattern.

Patterns are wooden versions of the actual item being made. These were made by pattern makers who were amongst the most accurate woodworkers ever. And these guys worked out of pattern shops which were specially equipped woodworking shops that never really taxed their machines. The machines were often top of the line machines such as olivers and tannys. Some were actually modified by companies like oliver for the trade. Two cases in point would be the patternmaker wood lathe and the drafting jointer known as a patternmaker.

I think the best patternmaker jointer ever made was the oliver #12. It appears similar to a #166 but is not. The controls for the infeed table are located on the front of the machine and not at the edge of the machine like a #166 would have. And there were two control wheels not one. One wheel controlled how deep a cut you would take. The other rotated or tilted the infeed table relative to the cutter head by up to as much as 5 degrees. This would cut a taper on the board being jointed and this taper was called draft. Hence, when your infeed table is not aligned with your cutter head, the condition is now referred to as drafting.

The patternmaker lathe is a hybrid between a metal lathe and a wood lathe. Like a metal lathe, it has a simple carriage that runs on a rack and pinon track. This carriage has no compound. IT also more often than not has no power feed. There is no bull gear tumbler drive either. Now some had optional power feed but it was a simple belt drive affair. This lathe was designed to quickly turn wood into precision shapes. Lathe tools could be supported using a wood lathe tool support or you could mount mini tool supports in the carriage. They are very cool lathes indeed.

Here is one example of the patternmakers trade. This URL takes you into the world of wooden patterns used to build austin healy engine blocks. This will blow your mind.

http://www.dmdaustralia.com.au/block1.html

The next URL is one of a record of archive photos set up by the US government. It is a record of a navy pattern shop that no longer exits. Now this is what woodcraft in the mall should look like!

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=hhphoto&fileName=wa/wa0400/wa0480/photos/browse.db&action=browse&recNum=0&title2=Puget%20Sound%20Naval%20Shipyard,%20Pattern %20Shop,%20Farragut%20Avenue,%20Bremerton,%20Kitsa p%20County,%20WA&displayType=1&itemLink=r?ammem/hh:@FIELD(DOCID+@BAND(@lit(WA0480)))

Hopefully this URL works. We often played games by downloading the high rez photos and identifying some of the tools. This shop is crammed full of the good stuff from emmert vises to oliver pattern jointers to tanny tablesaws to kindt collins spindle sanders, etc. etc. etc. This shop tour is the king kong of all shop tours even it no longer exists.

[Frank Chaffee]

Dev,
That was an absolutely fascinating vignette of American use of machinery during WWII. Thank you.

At some point in time I hope to read your thoughts on the scenario where the United States is called to another undertaking at that scale.

Always looking forward to your posts,
Frank

[Barry O'Mahony]

FYI, I now get a "bandwidth limit exceeded" message trying to access www.northfieldwoodworking.com (http://www.northfieldwoodworking.com). 'looks like they're getting more traffic now than they've anticipated. ;)

[Jarrod Nelson]

FYI, I now get a "bandwidth limit exceeded" message trying to access www.northfieldwoodworking.com (http://www.northfieldwoodworking.com). 'looks like they're getting more traffic now than they've anticipated. ;)

Looks like you slashdoted them Dev. That really says something for the traffic on this site. I look forward to looking at it when they come back up.