In the 1970's I worked in a shop that had two L&S lathes. One was a 24" with about a 20' bed. The other was a 20" Tool Room Lathe with a 16' bed. These were really heavy-duty machines.
The 24" was a pre-WWII model that had Timken spindle bearings, but the rest of the machine was of low-speed design. It had standard V ways. We used it for really large or long work repairing logging and sawmill equipment. It had an interesting history. It was bought by the Navy and sent to the Philippines just before the Japanese invasion. It was never hooked up, survived the war, and was brought back to the US on a cargo ship that went directly into storage. Around 1970 the ship was bought by a salvage company and dismantled. This lathe was saved and sold to my employer, who put it under power the first time in 1972!
The 20" Lodge was out bread-and-butter machine. It had the power and spindle speed to handle carbide tooling and was a wonderful machine. It had the inverted notch ways, which pushed the carriage deeper into the inverted groove in the front way as more pressure was being applied to the cut. Being a Tool Room Lathe, it had lots of travel speeds and thread options. The highest spindle speed was 1500 RPM, and that speed got used a lot! This lathe was also from a scrapped Navy ship, in this case a repair ship. This lathe may have seen some use in WWII, but if so, it wasn't much. I believe it was made around 1943.
Lodges are heavy!!!!! You could make three modern lathes of the same swing/centers with the iron in one Lodge.
