Dating a No 5 Warner and swasey turret lathe.

01freeman · Oct 18, 2016

Im trying to find what year the lathe is i just picked up. Its a Warner and Swasey No 5 turret lathe. The serial number is 396821 it also has a tag with 1240 and a 6 under that. I saved it from the scrappers at an auction. It was in a working shop and had tooling to go with it as well. Any information is appreciated. Also any comments from those that have used this type and brand of lathe before.

Thanks

johnoder · Oct 18, 2016

1933/1934

Very possibly old enough to still have threaded spindle nose

01freeman · Oct 18, 2016

I'm trying to figure out how to post some pics of the lathe lol

Billyum · Oct 18, 2016

I used a W & S Turret Lathe, largest collet pad was 1 1/2", not sure what #. Had to change chasers often on Geometric die head. Most runs were 3 to 20 parts. It was during my apprenticeship at Nabisco.

conant · Oct 18, 2016

One thing I can guarantee from my experience with Warner and Swasey.
They are serious metal removers. I don't believe they know the word chatter.

DeSelle · Oct 19, 2016

Our company made its products on the backs of 2A's for half a century. We have only a few left now but Warner Swazeys are amazingly stout machines if you need a turret lathe.

johnoder · Oct 19, 2016

Here is a scan on the #5 from 1934 - still has the 6 3/4 - 5TPI spindle nose. The USA had no idea a world war was less than 8 years off, but they were getting ready anyway - in the middle of the depression

01freeman · Oct 19, 2016

That looks exactly like it. What is the 6-3/4 5TPI spindle nose. Im a novice to this lathe. Thanks for the info.

Paolo_MD · Oct 19, 2016

Off topic, but I couldn't resist...

When I saw the title of the thread "Dating a No 5 Warner and swasey turret lathe." I immediately thought: in a home-shop environment, it could be a faithful cheap date, but in a production environment you could be sure that she'll be fooling around with the guys on the other shifts.

Paolo

PS I don't think you'll be ever disappointed by this great machine.

Limy Sami · Oct 19, 2016

Never having piloted a W&S I can only say that if they match the British Ward and Herbert turrets - which I'm lead to believe they do) you have a real metal mover on your hands.

Just be careful, some machines will bite you, powerful turret lathes will eat you alive!

01freeman · Oct 19, 2016

Here are some pictures of the lathe

01freeman · Oct 19, 2016

Another picture

01freeman · Oct 19, 2016

another picture. this is as it was removed from the previous owners shop. They were just going to scrap it before I made a deal. It was just tool cool to see it get tossed away. What is something like this worth. It came with 4 chucks and 5 boxes of tooling.

01freeman · Oct 19, 2016

it came with a phase converter he had hooked up as well.

johnoder · Oct 19, 2016

What is the 6-3/4 5TPI spindle nose. Im a novice to this lathe.

A little reading will help fix that. Old lathes had threaded spindle noses holding the chuck on AND driving same

Later, we had STANDARDS organizations that changed all that, and fixed up the industry with STANDARDIZED spindle noses with more or less interchangeable spindle tooling make to make - none of it using THREADS to drive spindle tooling

Example - say when your #5 was new it came with a giant pile of expensive spindle tooling - none of which would fit non #5 W&S lathes

Standardization helped to correct some of that sillyness

01freeman · Oct 19, 2016

Thanks for the info. Is there a sticky on here with some good reading material on that subject?

wippin' boy · Oct 19, 2016

I love the fact it's still tooled.
she never gave up, they just walked away from her.
all the collet closer guts are gone but a three jaw will get you where you need to go.

RedlineMan · Oct 19, 2016

Sheeesh;

That's got to be the offensive tackle of lathes. 6' tall and 4' wide!! What a brute!!!

Jim Christie · Oct 19, 2016

Here is a link to one of the pages of the Turret Lathe Operators Manual on the Warner and Swasey history and there are some others on my Photobucket album .
TurrretLatheOperatorsManualHistRevi.jpg Photo by JEChristie | Photobucket
I had posted the link in this older thread.
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...0964/?highlight=Turret+Lathe+Operators+Manual
There is a copy of the 140 edition on line here , https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89089665293;view=1up;seq=7 mine is a 1951 edition .
You may be able to find a used copy of a another edition online some where that may be helpful if you want to get some use out of your machine .
There are other Warner and Swasey publications on archive.org and hathitrust.org that may also be useful .
Jim

wippin' boy · Oct 20, 2016

RedlineMan said:
Sheeesh;

That's got to be the offensive tackle of lathes. 6' tall and 4' wide!! What a brute!!!

horsepower is the answer I all situations.

another thing I just love is seeing the old Rosey the riveter posters with Mrs. Cleaver pulling the handles on those babies

Dating a No 5 Warner and swasey turret lathe.

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