Any way to guess at the age of a flat-bed metal lathe bed from southern Germany?

I picked up this bed as the base for a significant wood lathe (center height 16"-20").

The bed has no markings in the cast. There were no headstock nor tailstock with it, it had cracks on both sides inside the carriage way (repaired with a strip and some bolts) and the connection between carriage way and leadscrew was broken and missing. In short, it had a hard life and it was used as a base for some drilling gizmo's which probably saved it from being scrapped.

The bed measures 112" long and 12" wide. I picked it up in southern Germany, quite close to Maxhütte, which was a significant steel mill in Germany until about 25 years ago.


Anyway, I´d be interested to learn how old this lathe is - I know metal lathes got prism beds pretty early, but people on owwm.org mentioned (wenn did metal lathes transition from flat to prism beds? - Old Woodworking Machines) that dovetail beds like this one were never really common and typically European. Also, "Flat ways were used on lower quality lathes well into the twentieth century". In this case, lower quality must be about the accuracy as a metal lathe, since the bed is in pretty good condition for my purposes.




The dovetail form is recognizable here.

Can anybody tell me anything about the probable age of this bed?

Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing your pictures .
Many lathes made in the U.K. had a similar style of bed for some time after most others adopted the raised "V" or prism shaped ways.
One way to help determine the possible origin of the lathe is to check the screw threads and dimensions on parts of the carriage.
Inch dimensions and British Standard Whitworth screw threads would tend to indicate a British built lather where as metric ones would likely indicate made in the
I'm not familiar with all the makes but other places to check for similar looking lathes if you haven't seen them before are ,
Lathes + Machine Tool Archive
Graces Guide
Some of our U.K. members may be able to add more.
Jim
Some examples from the U.K.
Here https://www.practicalmachinist.com/...r-wallace-foundry-scanned-original-e-mail.jpg
from this thread
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/...on-orchar-112792/index2.html?highlight=Orchar

So far, all the screws I've found were metric. Trying to determine the exact pitch of the leadscrew is somewhat iffy, since it's 50 mm (or 2") in diameter and has a pitch of 12 mm (or 1/2") and while I have some thread feelers, nothing in this size.

However, I'm not searching for the exact model, I'm trying to get a feeling for when flat ways went away, if that's possible.

If the hardware is metric that is a good indication that it isn't a U.K. machine unless it was made for export.
Here is one way to measure the pitch of the lead screw.
If you still have the carriage on the bed and can engage the 1/2 nut with the lead screw and rotate the leadscrew exactly one turn and measuring the travel with a dial indicator or a digital vernier caliper from a given point you will have the pitch of the leadscrew within a reasonable limit allowing for some wear on the leadscrew and the 1/2 nut.
Jim

some wear was present allright - the connection between saddle and leadscrew was broken off. That may be the main reason this bed was just used as a base/stand for some drilling gizmos, as I wrote at the start. It wasn't usable as a lathe anymore.

Simplest way to measure pitch of leadscrew is to measure across as many threads as you can, and divide by that number. E.G if you measure 20 threads, and get 60 mm your pitch is 3mm. Local wear will be less of a factor, original inaccuracy more of a factor

Sorry I had to wait a few days for unused attachments to be autoremoved. Turns out I have more pictures than I can add attachmends and lets say the attachment system and I will never be friends. So I tried to add all pictures to a pdf and upload that, but I think it's too big.

https://www.houtenschalen.nl/pics_div/lathe_parts.pdf

So I uploaded the PDF to my own website. In the pdf are all the pictures of the carriage and carriage parts I have.
I noticed a couple of things:

1) the only bronze is the nut for the cross-slide leadscrew. All other moving parts run steel-on-steel.
2) everything looks very utilitarian - only at the back of the carriage one part looks rounded, everything else is straight
3) thread-sizes are a mix of metric and whitworth; looks like the repairs are mainly metric, but also the toolpost is M27x3.
4) The main feedscrew has 50 threads on 623 mm, which I can't say if it's metric or not

Thanks for all your help so far!

Jurriaan said:

1) the only bronze is the nut for the cross-slide leadscrew. All other moving parts run steel-on-steel.

Click to expand...

Most of what you are calling steel is cast iron.
Lubricated cast iron is an efficient bearing for a steel shaft.

Mike

Jurriaan said:

... 4) The main feedscrew has 50 threads on 623 mm, which I can't say if it's metric or not..

Click to expand...

If the correct number of complete threads is 49 instead of 50 in 623 mm, then the pitch is exactly 1/2" or 2 threads per inch. If you have an inch scale of most any length, but best is over 12 inches, lay it against the lead screw and see if the threads align exactly with the inch marks all along the scale.

Larry