Wickes Brothers No.44 Thread Mill

Looking for any information on a Wickes No. 44 thread mill, I need print of some kind or a maintenance manual. I have not been able to locate anything on the web. We are replacing the bearings and seals in the machine and any help would be great.

Jason,

I have a old service manual to a No. 44. But unfortunately, it does not have any parts breakdowns or parts lists. Just very basic operation instructions and that's about it. I used to have a drawing of the machine that was kind of a assembly drawing. But with all of the moves I've been through over the years, it has been lost. I do remember dad saying one of the Timken bearings was not made anymore and they had to make a very large thin sleeve bushing with about a 1/4" thick wall to take up the space for the new bearing. Of course this has been almost 40 years ago! I myself have never worked on one, but have been around many back then. I reversed engineered a few parts to one way back then that pertained to the feed drive, again, lost history. Ken

Ken,
Thanks for the info, you are right these machines are part of a lost history. I work at the Watervliet Arsenal in upstate NY, there used to be 40 or 50 of these machines here back in the day, now we have about a half dozen and all the service manuals have been lost. We do have an operators manual but nothing with any drawings. We are replacing bearings and seals in the thread miller spindle, its completely torn down, now we have to wait for parts to be ordered - hopefully they still make them!! The bearings have a date engraved into them 5-17-45 we really used to make some great steel back then. Thanks again, Jason

Jason,

The company my dad worked for back in the 1960's probably bought all of them from the Government back then. Drilco owned around twenty of these and were located around the World. They were retrofitted to cut rotary shouldered connections on drill collars and such for the oilfield drilling industry. I was very young back then, and recall seeing several of them including the old Smally-General thread mills, too. They were not the monster as the Wicks were but still intimidated for their size. Ken

I believe this is a picture of a Wicks thread mill taken in 1963.