An interesting antique lathe purchase.

[spongerich]

I went to an auction yesterday with the hope of bringing home an interesting old lathe I saw in the preview pics. It's an Artisan 11 x 24 gap bed, circa 1930... it'll swing a 16" diameter over the gap. Fascinating little machine with a clutch for the drive (needs repair) and lots of shiny brass parts. She came with a huge steady rest that's clearly for a different lathe and some rusty MT5 tooling (also from another machine). All in for $200 including a couple boxes of Corian that I'm planning to use for soft jaws and some other shop projects.

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[Techie1961]

Interesting old piece. What are you going to do with it? Restoration or just use it?

 

[crguy]

An unusual lathe for sure. Did you see the information on Tonys' site? http://www.lathes.co.uk/artisan/

 

[spongerich]

Interesting old piece. What are you going to do with it? Restoration or just use it?

I'll probably do a light restoration. The clutch is missing some parts, so I'll get that working. The paint is in pretty good condition, so I'm inclined to leave it and just touch it up. There's also plenty of brass, so that'll all get polished. At some point, the original flat belt drive was replaced with V-belts. I have some cone pulleys from a South Bend 9" that I think I can retrofit to give it a more authentic look. Finding original parts is probably going to be more or less impossible, but these will be close.

I already have a lathe, but this'll be a good addition. The through hole in the spindle is large for a lathe of this size (about 1-1/4") and there's room to make a 5C collet chuck. I have a bunch of collets already, so that'll give me a lot of utility for little or no money.

 

[rsanter]

Very interesting. I would have bought that for $200 no problem

Bob

 

[Jim Diesel]

Keep us updated with the restoration. Once again nice find.

 

[zkling]

Yep, Artisan, yet another manufacturer from the machine tool mecca of days past. There is a small shop here in town that has one of those in their lobby.