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Lorch KD 50 + Attachments

Bkraft

Plastic
Joined
Apr 15, 2018
Hi All,

I was referred to this site by my machinist friend. He said you guys might be able to help value this lathe which has been passed down to me. I've looked up general values but one thing that I'm particularly interested in is the additional value that all the accessories bring. I haven't been able to identify them all, but I know for sure that I have the collet set from 3 to 90. Another thing to point out is that the lathe has been sitting evenly on the granite slab for years so as to prevent gravity from negatively effecting the precision over time.

Please review the photos and tell me what you can identify from the set as well as where the best place would be to sell it, if not here.

Thanks!

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Very nice watchmaker or instrument maker's lathe.

Can't help you with anything resembling accurate pricing, but will suggest that the NAWCC, National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, site and Forum may be a worth while lead.

Presumably you have seen Page Title Worth a poke around the other Watchmakers Lathe descriptions there to find the names of the various accessories you do have, and you do have a pretty well equipped rig there.

Below the collets is an assortment of hollow mills, below those, reamers, likely as not, sized to do jeweling work (replacing or adding jewels,the bearings used in watches and fine clocks).

The spare headstock likely is used to mill items which are between centers, driven by the overhead or the unit to the left of the lathe on the table.

I see a dividing plate, a milling slide, a steady rest, a rest for hand turning, a faceplate with centering plunger, several arbors for gluing parts to, a grinding wheel arbor, a 3 and a 4 jaw chuck, and a bunch more stuff.

The little thing to the left of the dial indicator is a tool holder for the cross slide. Might be a two piece unit that slips over that, which adjusts the height of the tool, essentially an adjustable washer.

Nice.

Cheers
Trev
 
If the slides are metric (quite likely are) it opens up the market a bit. That setup will bring 2 or 3k on ebay as a baseline. Possibly more, almost certainly not less. I wouldn't be surprised if it sold to a German.

Sent from my SM-G901F using Tapatalk
 
Neat machine! Not that it changes anything, but the numbers stated for collet sizes, I'd guess as wire size for those. A rough visual of that range [90 to 3] would be like a very small needle diameter to a small pencil diameter.

I actually could think of a couple uses with it sitting on my kitchen table - I bet everyone here could; but, no doubt, watch makers and the like would make far better use of it. I doubt my wife would be too impressed with it on the kitchen table either. :D

Good luck finding a nice home for it!
 
Neat machine! Not that it changes anything, but the numbers stated for collet sizes, I'd guess as wire size for those. A rough visual of that range [90 to 3] would be like a very small needle diameter to a small pencil diameter.

I actually could think of a couple uses with it sitting on my kitchen table - I bet everyone here could; but, no doubt, watch makers and the like would make far better use of it. I doubt my wife would be too impressed with it on the kitchen table either. :D

Good luck finding a nice home for it!

I have not seen a watchmakers lathe collet that was not a Metric size. Usually decimal Millimeters, a 1 collet being .1mm, a 10, 1mm, etc. Even back in the Civil war days in the US, the Watch industry was mostly, Metric. The French Ligne, was commonly used to size watch cases. It works pretty well for the size parts that were being made. If you were to dig through the catalogs of spare and replacement parts, you would see a lot of references to pivot sizes as a number, again, directly translatable to decimal millimeters.

The normal range that I have seen about and around, was typically up to a Number 50 collet (5mm) and then a lot of accessory holders would fit into the 50 collet. That is typically as large a through bore as the makers wish to use on an 8mm WW pattern collet, though I suppose larger is easy enough if the through size is stepped down.

I would suggest that having Metric slides is less of a problem than would be thought by those outside of the relative sphere of watches and clocks.

IIRC, about 30 years back, I inquired as to the price of a Bergeon Box Set, and was quoted a bit over $20K, damn near my annual salary at that time. Needless to say, that set me back on my heels a bit and tempered (somewhat) my casual interest in owning such! I suspect they have not gotten cheaper since!

Cheers
Trev
 
Trev, I have a set of 10mm Levin collets in 1/64" sizes.
1/64" to 1/4".

That makes some sense, as Levin is a US Company.

I think that the 10mm collets likely saw a lot more use in Instrument shops and the like too, maybe more so that the 8mmm WW collets.

Standard rules apply. There are exceptions for every statement, and if the customer wants, the customer will inevitably, get! :)

Cheers
Trev
 
I just looked at my 8mm collets and I have the same 1/64 sizes in those also.
Plus a 5/16 one. But the 5/16 doesn't go all the way through the bore.
Only about 5/16 deep.
 








 
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