Search results

If you can, please post a photo of the threading chart...it should be a plate, probably brass, attached to the lathe head stock that lists the gear combinations for each thread. A quick look at the Boston Gear catalog does not show any 16DP gears with 33 or 34 teeth...they skip from 32 to 36...

Also...look at the threading chart attached to the lathe and see if it has a 33 or 34 tooth gear. It isn't likely to have both and the odd number is very unlikely. You need the gears listed on that chart.

Last night I looked up "screw" in The Complete Dictionary of Arts & Schences (Temple Henry Croker, 1765). Unfortunately, while it mentions both wood and iron screws as well as square threads, there is nothing on how they were made. There are some very good illustrations (including a lathe) but...

I am pretty certain fly presses go back to at least the middle of the 18th century. In fact, I can think of a case from the Old Bailey c.1760 where a man was arrested for counterfeiting because he had a "coining press". When it went to trial it turned out he made escutcheon plates for the London...

With a breech 5" wide the bore can't be much more than an inch. It's supposed to be a George II period gun. It's more on the size of a model than a real gun. If it old (which I doubt) it isn't a piece of naval ordnance....or it's a swivel gun that has lost it's original mounting. This sort of...

IF...it is really an 18th century gun, the price is not outrageous. Collectors of genuine artillery are not common but they are out there. A Russian bronze gun cast in 1802 and salvaged in Sebastopol harbor recently sold for much more. I can't see the pictures so I'm on the fence as to whether...

I wasn't there when the cores were made but that is what I understood to be the case. He didn't say why he wanted to do it that way but this makes a lot of sense.

As a point of reference, these are the pattern and core box for the pistons shown above that John O made. You can see how much draft there was to get the piston out of the sand. The core boxes have a piece attached at the bottom only because the molder at the foundry preferred to make the cores...

That has to be the same person. Frank Cooke was unusual in the old car world as being both an extremely talented machinist/maker of things and well off enough to put his money behind his ideas. It's not an often seen combination. He'd owned the Cooke Optical Company where he made parts for...

I haven't a clue as to what that is...what sort of books have holes punched in them. About all I can think of is something to punch a series of tiny holes along the folded edge of the signature for the threads to pass through. I've done hand binding but in that case you just use a needle...I'm...

An awful lot depends on what sort of machine it is...if it's an early "perfect binder" it's probably near worthless. If it's a machine for stitching signatures it may be quite desirable. A lot of small binderies use very old equipment for multiple reasons though mostly because machines for short...

I don't know how it compared to the Ford V8 or the Lincoln but the most demanding casting project I've ever seen undertaken by an engine restorer was the aluminum Rolls Royce head for the Phantom I. These are a notable weak point in the design although it's one that didn't show up until the cars...

The piston mold John made worked perfectly... You might try looking up the ICS (International Correspondence School) book on green sand casting which, If I remember correctly, has a section on engine blocks. It was published in 1912 so, needless to say, we're talking about pre-WW! type engines...

It doesn't look all that bad to me, certainly better than the Sidney I run every day (when it came into the shop). It was a lot of work to get it up and running but if you are new to this and not trying to meet a deadline, nothing will better prepare you for using the lathe than understanding...

It's an office building now...

By "early" I was largely thinking of pre-1906. Locomobile purchased the Stanley patents in 1899. I'm not sure when their last steam car was built but I believe they were out of the steam car business before 1905. They sold the Stanley patents back to the Stanley brothers for a fraction of what...

I dug out volume 1 of the two volume set I was reading to look up bearings and see what it said. The title is "A Practical Treatise on Automobiles", edited by Oscar C. Schmidt and published in 1909. Each section is taken from some known authorities (at the time). Note the reference to...

The list I was reading was 1909 and 2,000 would be about the top end for that time period. You are correct about 1902. I think about 1200 rpm would have been maximum then and, at that time, there was very little flexability in engine speed. The earliest cars even had govenors to prevent their...

Parsons' White Brass was widely used for automotive bearings in the early days. According to one source it contained 68% tin, 30% zinc, 1% copper, 1% lead, so it would be much cheaper than Babbitt. Parsons' alloy was developed by Perceval Moses Parsons, a very useful sort of bloke. His bearing...

I wish I could but I traded it off a long time ago and I can't say I remember how it came apart. That said, it can't have been too difficult because it was the first old machine I worked on and I don't remember it being difficult to disassemble or reassemble.