Is There a British Equivalent to Machinery's Handbook?

Is there a British equivalent to Machinery's Handbook ?

(On the remote chance that a few of our British friends aren't familiar with MH, it's a fat handbook, about 1,900 (!) pages, with encyclopaedic information on just about everything related to machinery - threads, collets, gears, standard tapers, all that kind of info. This handbook became SUCH a standard in the USA that some tool chest makers include a special drawer to hold it.)

The fellows on the other side of the pond must have something like this......

Thanks, and a tip of the hat - John Ruth

Nothing reasonably modern in one volume that I've seen.
Newnes Engineers reference maybe up to around mid '60's.
Tend to find more "pocket books" and somewhat specific handbooks rather than the attempted coverall volume that Machinery's is. Albeit with the definition of "all" somewhat stuck in the up to 1980 (ish) and for smallish firm bracket.

Kempes Engineers Year Book is rather different being more general coverage articles and rather less of "our" type of engineering. Handy tho' especially when you need to know a bit more about something you've not paid great attention to in the past. Anyway that died around 2000.

Clive

Kempes is the only one I've seen that comes near it. At£100 + its quite expensive
MBB

They probably just use the English language version of it.

I've got a Kempes, when the firm was privatised they closed the library and literaly threw all the books out! I've bought a Machinists Handbook, very small print, very fragile paper, very dry read, couldn't find anything better over here. Get a oil proof PC and a wireless connection, its all out there on the net (or should I say its all here on the net).
Frank

Machinery Handbook is a bit like a Bridgeport turret mill,highly overated.I find the older ones more use but prefer the Newnes handbook.The quality of the paper in the newer MH`s is pathetic,I`ve seen thicker ********* papers.
Mark.

Mark McGrath said:

Machinery Handbook is a bit like a Bridgeport turret mill,highly overated.I find the older ones more use but prefer the Newnes handbook.The quality of the paper in the newer MH`s is pathetic,I seen thicker ********* papers.
Mark.

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Having had a 9th ed for years & bought the 27th last year I can only agree.

FWIW there's a lot of half complete specs.

In Germany they have the"Dubbel, Taschenbuch fuer den Maschinenbau "
1500 pages
I have one but almost never use it
With about a millioen sold that would be the German equivalent of the MH
I do have a small pocket book about 50 pages which covered most of my needs
Nowadays I do very little machining

Peter from Holland

MH

My copy is the 11th and had a wartime address of 17 Marine Parade, Brighton.

The date---------------------------------1941!

The price----------------------------38 shillings.

Norman

SouthBendModel34 said:

Is there a British equivalent to Machinery's Handbook ?

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Zeus Book?

Here's guessing no ons would buy

The Bloody Machinist's Hansdbook.

Thank all that responded. I knew, when I posted this, that there would be a wide variety of opinions......and somehow I anticipated that some of the comments would be "witty", to say the least. (After all, is not all of Great Britain, including Scotland, Wales, etc. known for its wry humor?)

Peterve, my German consists only of 3 years in secondary school, not enough to tackle a technical work in Deutsch.

I'm going to look for the Newnes and Kempes, they sound interesting.

Does anyone know of a manual which might have information on now-obsolete British standards, like whatever PRECEEDED B.S.W. ? I've seen, in the Jersey City Public Library Reference Room, a 1902 work entitled "A Treatise on Obsolete British Threading Systems" - which was written and printed in the USA, IIRC. That's the kind of thing I am looking for - something encyclopedic that would cover former practices as well as current practices.

I have an ancient British model steam engine to restore, among other things.

John Ruth

Machinery Handbook

The first recorded screws date to the 7th Century BC when they hung up the plants in Babylon.

After that, you have your pick from Jesse Ramsden of 1735-1800 up to Joseph Whitworth 1804-1887- and British Standard Whitworth.

Somehow, I doubt that nuts and bolts were anything but 'standard' The British Admiralty did specify that screw heads were not to be under 1" AF as 'the British Matelots simply overtightened anything smaller'

It is only in the last few weeks that Stephen Fry did a program on the first printing press but that was in Germany and the screw was not metal but wood and cut with a chisel.
Again, wine press screws- and they did make wine in England in Roman times were wooden ones.

When one of the oldest stone screw threads was done is obscure but there is a pillar in Durham Cathedral which was hand carved. After that, screws were used in clocks and musical instruments.So on the latter, you are looking for when keys were first fitted onto recorders, oboes, clarinets and so on.

I got lost at this point with Hector Berlioz who was into such things.
After I found out that he conducted 'March to the Scaffold' by marching and conducting the band backwards, I gave up.

And so should you! And the rumour that I wrote the biography of Joseph Whitworth is- only a rumour.

Cheers

Norman Atkinson

The Machinery's Handbook contains the British standards, so I don't know why you'ld need a seperate one.

Machinery Handbook

The Question was 'What preceded BSW? BSW was Whitworth who was 57 years of age when the American Civil War started. That's the point in history!

Norman

Norman,

THANK YOU. You did a better job of getting to the heart of the matter than I did.

Charles T. Porter, one of the founders of the ASME had dealings with Mr. Whitworth in his old age, which he relates in his autobiography "Engineering Reminesces".

Among other things, I'm unclear on when Mr. Whitworth's 1841 (!) proposal was adopted as a British Standard. The current standard seems to be dated 1956, and there is some unclear information about a reduction in standard hex sizes at about the time of WWII.

I'm also interested in what a British Engineer/Machinist/ERA etc. would have needed to know to get by in, say, 1900 when there might still have been pre-Whitworth items floating around.

JRR

"Google.co.uk"

JRR

Molesworth is probably the book for older data covering the pre First World War period. Appears occasionally on E-Bay UK so its not completely uncommon. Nothing else has come up often enough for the names to stick but tech and formulae books of the right era do appear but repeats seem rare.
Two copies of late 50s' era Newnes Engineers Reference by FJ Camm up at the moment. No bids yet, I'm guessing £10 to £12 including delivery to a UK address and wondering if I'm sufficiently curious!

Clive

Machinery Handbook etc

John, I have added an 'etcetera' as we have both moved the goal posts!

One of the easy answers about the head sizes( not HM Royal Navy jokes) was to save material during WW2.

The next is that I actually have a MH which was written when the US was in doubt whether we, the Brits, would go under. An even earlier edition would bring in more information about older 'foreign' German and French threads.

Being 78, I can only go back to say 1933 and with my father in the Colliery blacksmiths shop. This is not sufficiently ancient( though I sometimes wonder) and had my great granfather been alive, we could have got the conditions for the building of the first railway locomotives and 'winding engines in collieries.

Whether you could 'con' someone in the Discovery Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne to tell you what there is in the nuts and bolts 'department' is somewhat doubtful but unquestionably there is an enormous amount of history. Googling, there is a lot of 'rubbish' but I used to go into the old museum when I was a kid in the last war and it would take a researcher days to plough their way.

Again, the Beamish Museum( was Frank Atkinson's 'baby'- no relation) which contains more stuff again.

Probably the real gem would be to get access to the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle. I used to be a member as a student. Again, I know just how much is there.
Almost next door is the Mining Institute in Neville Hall and no, you are not getting onto the top floor unless you have a fancy apron and a sword- well, yes!

So there you are. Fly into Newcastle and get stuck in with Brown Ale, Stotty cake and Singing Hinnies.

Me, merely an interested observer( and I am going to stick to my story)

Cheers

Norman

Kemp's Engineers' Year Book has a lot about thread systems, different in different editions - my father had the 1950 edition (I wish I knew where it is now!) and it was chock full of useful information. Cromwells publish 'The Ref', a pocket book, a bit like the Zeus one but I find it more useful. For a more detailed treatment with some history, 'Drills, taps and dies' by Tubal Cain, No 12 in the Workshop Practice Series, is very good and is listed on Amazon. I couldn't resist putting mine in the bookshelf next to 'Eats, shoots and leaves' by Lynne Truss...

Historically, a British engineer in the early 1900s would have had the Whitworth thread from 1/16" upwards(since 1841 - I don't know when it became a British Standard), possibly the British Standard Fine thread from 3/16" upwards - I don't know when that was introduced - and the British Association (BA) thread which was introduced in 1884 and became a standard in 1903. From at least the mid-1930s the British Standards Institution recommended the use of BA threads for anything under 1/4" except, for some reason, 7/32" BSF. (Has anybody ever seen a 7/32" BSF thread in use? I haven't.)

I've always found the BA series amusing. It's a number system (0 to 22ish), dimensioned in God-Given Inches to the Nth place of decimals and British To The Core. Actually, the British Association pulled a fast one. The numbers hide the fact that it's a metric system, dimensioned in logical numbers of Communistic French Millimetres, and based on the Swiss Thury system which has a 47.5 degree angle. A hundred and twenty five years, and some people haven't noticed yet!

Anyway to get back to our engineer, he would have had the CEI cycle threads (another 60 degree system) later formalised as the British Standard Cycle thread or BSC. On imported goods he would have had the American Sellers thread, forerunner of the United States Standard and Unified series. There was the metric Systeme International series, adopted by an international congress in 1898 and different from the French and German metric series, which were also different from each other. I have no doubt there were others. And any elderly, pre-Whitworth machinery would have had cook-your-own threads which could only be replaced individually.

There were other specialised threads, such as the Admiralty Fine series and the Royal Microscope Society thread, but they used the Whitworth profile. And of course we mustn't forget the Brass thread, Whitworth profile and 26 tpi irrespective of diameter. Why so? Most brass turning at that time was done freehand, like the wood turners of today. The brass turner would have one pair of 26 tpi chasers in his toolkit - internal and external. He simply offered the chaser up to the work and moved it along until it picked up a thread, then turned the other thread to match. Try swapping the shade rings on old brass lampholders and you'll see what I mean.

I consider myself fortunate that I only need BA, BSW, BSF, UNC, UNF, ME, ISO metric and BSC taps and dies to keep my various bits of machinery going. I also consider myself lucky that I can afford to go and buy them relatively cheaply. My grandfather, who with his father ran a small country engineering business in the early twentieth century, had to make a lot of small tools himself after the book-keeping was done in the evenings becuse he couldn't afford to buy them. I have used some of his hand-made taps and dies (Whitworth thread!) and still have some number stamps he made in 1905, along with some very beautiful hand tools.