Brittania lathe and oil engine company, looking for info.

Hello all,
I'm a newbie here and new to lathes in general. However, that's all about to change as i recently purchased this old lathe with the intention of bringing it back into some kind of a workable condition. After a fairly intense internet search I have concluded that not much info exists on these lathes and by searching the forums here I could only find one reference to one Britannia lathe and one shaper, so I'm hoping that some parts will either interchange with other brands or that the parts can be modified to fit my machine, most notably the compound slide on mine is broken in half where the T-nut attaches. Also missing are the feed gears, I have a few , but by no means a full set for threading etc.
Anyway, here are the few things that I do know (or believe that I know), it has a 14.5" swing, a 7' bed and is 54" between centers (I think I measured this part correctly, chuck jaws to tail stock). I am missing the counter shaft that the flat belts ran on, and in it's place came a three speed car transmission and an add-on pulley for v-belts on the head stock I'll have to get some pic's up here of what I'm doing a poor job of describing.
Sorry about the rambling post, that likely only makes sense to me, hopefully I can parlay things a little better as we go along.

Thanks, Don

Hi Don,

Welcome to the site.

You will find quite a bit of information on Britannia lathes here:

http://www.lathes.co.uk/britannia/index.html

franco

I'm going to try and put up a couple pics of what
I'm up against.

In this pic I'm just trying to jerry rig it together enough to try and fire the old gal up, I've got the motor hanging off of my drill press as a temp stand.


Piecing together my new find.


This shows the v-belt pulley over the middle step in the old flat belt pulley.


Not the best pic of it, but you can see where the compound is broken.



This is what I'm left with for drive components. I was told it was running when the fellow I bought it from bought it, but I think (know) he lost a couple pieces while he had it stored in his shop. It'll likely never be restored to its former glory, but I would like to get it into some kind of reasonable running condition with-out compromising its restorability should I locate the missing pieces.
Thanks again, Don

Thanks Franco,
I've found that page and found it to be a good read, but not much info on any particular models especially mine which I believe falls under the larger and rarer of the models and nothing to nail down a positive ID on what I have.
Don

I have the book Turning Lathes, A Manual for Technical Schools and Apprentices by J. Lukin, London, E. & F. N. Spon,1888. The last 32 pages are an advertisement for The Britannia Company of Colchester, England. They showed a number of lathes, mostly foot powered. There was even a foot powered treble geared gap bed model for doing large work where steam was not available.

I was interested to see a single cylinder gas engine sold as an alternative to foot or steam power. It was called a "cheap gas engine" and was priced at 18 pounds. "Gas" in this context was lighting gas, piped around most cities of the time and more common than electricity. Petrol (gasoline) engines were just catching on then. The engine had the unique, in my experience, distinction of being rated at "one man power." In other words, it could replace the foot power on a lathe. I found a website that said, in the 18th-19th centuries, 1 manpower was 1/12 HP.
http://www.sizes.com/units/manpower.htm

Larry

Hi Larry,
That's very interesting about one manpower being 1/12th of a horse power, can't say as I've ever been compared to a horse before; perhaps a few other farm critters but not a horse.
By any chance, would you have any idea what model this thing might be?

Also all, can any one tell me if I were to pick up a set of threading gears from say an Atlas or similar would they work on mine as long as the bore was the same?
I've tried repairing the compound by bolting a piece of 1/4" plate to the top of it and will have to wait until my tool post arrives before I'll know if I can get away with this height-wise or if I'll need to come up with another repair/replacement plan.

Don

I would suggest replacing the V belt with an auto serpentine belt. it will work much better on a flat pulley. You should be able to have a local garage save you an used one. Gary P. Hansen

Hi gary,
I'll have to try and get a better picture of what a previous owner has done there. They have fitted a tripple groove v-belt pulley over the center step of the old flat belt pulley which gives rise to he need for the three speed trans.
Don

Don, to match your old gears, you first need to figure out the size of the teeth. Assume it is 14.5 degree pressure angle and an inch diametral pitch. Count the teeth on one of the large gears that mesh with the change gears. Then measure its pitch diameter, which is a little less than the OD, maybe about a third of the way in from the the outer ends of the teeth. The larger the gear, the less critical is the PD measurement. Divide the number of teeth by the PD and you get the diametral pitch. For instance, a 3 inch gear with 60 teeth has 20 DP teeth. Expect to get an even number like 20 or 16. There are stock gears sold in common tooth sizes. You need to see if the thickness and bore size of stock gears match your existing gears or leave material that can be removed. You will need a key way in the bores, also. Normally, you can expect to have to do some modification to stock gears to make them work on an old machine. The trick is to find gears with the right teeth to start with.

The V-belt conversion should work OK. You can always add a 3 phase motor and VFD if you need other speeds.

Knowing the model of the lathe will not help finding replacement parts. You have an orphan.

Think about getting a really professional weld job on the broken compound. Then you will likely need to rescrape the dovetail to fix the warping.

Larry

When you see the size and weight of the flat belt countershaft assembly, I think you'll like that transmission setup a bit more. Don't be in too much of a hurry to get rid of it, as it was very common to adapt a multi-speed gearbox and convert to a V belt for all except the final drive to the spindle flat pulley.
As for diametral pitch of the gears, a good rule of thumb is to divide the number of teeth plus 2 by the outside diameter of the gear.

most of the information around about Britannia has to do with earlier machines.this lathe is much more recent.
there is a Britannia lathe on ebay-

http://cgi.ebay.com/Britannia-Self-...1QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1638Q2em118Q2el1247


the base under the head stock looks very much like the base on my shaper.
i guess it is not beyond the realm of posibility they designed the machine to utilise a much older design of base they had in stock, or had patterns for

Don, post up a better pic of the broken compound.
If you can't find a welder you can trust locally, if you want to ship it to me I will be more than happy to weld it up and have my brother machine it for you. I weld for a living for a local machine shop.

I have a no. 14 Britannia, amazingly ever change gear was with it, but it is missing the tail stock and of course the treadle set-up. I really have to put it back together before I lose some of the pieces

I also have a copy of the book Turning Lathes that is pictured in the ebay listing in thistles post, it has no info on your lathe covers the older lathes.
Scott.

Thanks for all the replies so far I'm starting to feel like there might be hope in getting the old gal back up and making chips. Yes an oddball lathe I have, but I'm quite sure the same has been said of it's owner a time or two. As far as knowing the model goes, the only good it'll do me is in the back of my head, and that I'm asked what I've got I stop saying "I dunno". It's something of a phobia I picked up when I was younger, generally had something to do with looking down at a busted pile of parts and with-out making eye contact using that little phrase in a sentence.
As far as age goes, I don't think it can be any newer than 1939 as I'm lead to believe they closed their doors in the late thirties, and I believe the old works were bombed out and burnt in 1944. Like any thing old it would be nice to know as much as possible about the type of work it may have done and the travels that it has taken before making one of it's stops at my house, it would be nice to include as much of this kind of info with it when it moves on to it's next adventure.
On the gears, I was thinking that since I have so few of them and I think all but one of them has broken or missing teeth, I would try and find replacements for all of them that are listed on the brass plate on the gear cover. Of course I'm assuming that this is even possible, I was kind of hoping that as long as the number of teeth matched and they were purchased as a set.


As far as age goes, I don't think it can be any newer than 1939 as I'm lead to believe they closed their doors in the late thirties, and I believe the old works were bombed out and burnt in 1944. Like any thing old it would be nice to know as much as possible about the type of work it may have done and the travels that it has taken before making one of it's stops at my house, it would be nice to include as much of this kind of info with it when it moves on to it's next adventure.

Sorry about the long read, I'll try and throw a couple of pictures up to try and make up for it.



The triple v-belt set-up.








The broken compound.




A better shot of the trans, of which I'm thinking of adding a step pulley to on the input side. That would give a pretty wide range of speeds as long as a single belt will do.

Don

Hi Don, I think I also looked at the same lathe before you, if you bought it in the lower mainland. If not it was an identical lathe and had the same broken compound slide/drive configuration. The price was right but I already have enough projects right now. It will make a neat project for you. Good luck, Dave

Hi Dave,
Yes, this is likely the same lathe as I picked it up in Cloverdale about a month and a half ago. I probably have enough projects/ headaches already but as you said the price was pretty good and it should meet my basic needs.

Don

Scott,
Based on what you see in the pictures, do you still think it might be repaired? I know the picture quality isn't the best, but you can see where a previous owner did a poor job of brazing it back together. I would imagine the brass would have to be completely removed or would brazing be the best option? Actually a new compound would be best, but might have to be scratch built to fit and I don't have the skill-set or equipment for that (yet).
Don

Clickable thumbnails from a 1928 catalogue.

Broken compound - when you have the skills and equipment, it would be possible to have a simple iron casting made, and fashion it into a replacement. I seem to recall a similar project being described in Model Engineer about 30 years ago (for a South Bend).

Regarding Thistle’s eBay link, the brass tag shows a previous owner to be one Baron von Moyland, residing in the interestingly-named place, Pantygoitre or perhaps more correctly, Pant-y-Goitre, presumably the one near Abergavenny in South Wales.

Asquith,
Thanks for posting those scans, those sure look alot like my machine only a little smaller. They do raise a few questions on the little bit of knowledge I thought I had regarding lathes though.
1) If I'm reading correctly these are of a 6" lathe, however it says it can swing 13" over the gap and 11" over the saddle. I was under the impression that the size was determined by the diameter of material that could be turned.
2) On mine with the removable gap in place I still have a gap in the bed , but in the pic's it shows the gap completely filled. Mine must be just a different model, or am I missing something.

Also somewhere I read that Joshua Bigwood & sons purchased the goodwill and manufacturing rights as well as the drawings, (but not the old works, I think Paxton took those over) and planned to continue producing the lathes etc.. Any idea if that actually happened? I so does any one know how long this went on for and is there any tie-up with the modern Bigwood company that supplies parts and manuals for many different makers of lathes and mills etc.?

Don

The English often rate lathes by swing radius or center height instead of swing diameter.

Larry

Hmm, I wonder if this was to be different or was it some part of a bigger conspiracey to confuse the easily confused such as I?