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Brown & Sharpe No. 5 taper?

Ralph_P

Stainless
Joined
Jan 14, 2003
Location
E. TN USA
Came across some very old NOS end mills. One lot has an odd (to me) shank. It's B&S HSS E-107 7/16" L (left hand spiral). It has a No. 5 Brown and Sharpe taper shank. There's no threads for a draw bar. Just wondering what machine would these fit? Maybe a screw machine?
 
Hardinge made a milling attachment to fit on the lathe slide rest, driven from an overhead pulley and round braided belt. It had two spindles, one for Hardinge 1C collets and the other for milling cutters with 4 B&S shanks. Apparently, the B&S cutters were pounded into the spindle with a lead hammer, or maybe pressed in with an arbor press.

In several decades of looking, I accumulated only a dozen or so 4 B&S shank milling cutters and have not seen many with other size B&S shanks. They must have been easy to get before the R8 collet and the Weldon holders became favored for holding end mills.

The catalog pictures are from a circa 1936 Hardinge catalog and a 1925 B&S catalog.

Larry

DSC01246.jpg. DSC01247.jpg DSC01190.jpg DSC02160.jpg DSC02678 (2).jpg
 
Thanks Larry. They sure made some odd attachments in the early days. The E107 end mill is listed in your last picture.
 
The consensus that I have come to is that B&S tapers,
being (about) 1/2" per foot, as self holding to a large
degree, with side forces of milling cutters.
Morse tapers, being (about) 5/8" per foot taper,
will not take much side force before they unseat.
Now this is rue-of-thumb wisdom here. There is a
practical limit to everything.
I recently acquired a Pratt Whitney 2A and I found
some P&W collets on ebay. Some of the collets are
adapters, down to #9 B&S taper and #5 B&S taper.
I wondered if they were actually going to be useful
to me. Then, when talking to a friend, be mentioned
that he has a set of B&S taper end mills that we could
barter and trade on. I think they are really meant to
be used as end-cutting reamers, used more to radially
locate a hole than ream per se. Because jig boreres are
all about location.
Another interesting area that I have (personally) found
a B&S taper used; I bought a couple of ID grinding spindles
that came from a Cincinnati #2 cutter grinder. I only have
one mandrel to mount a stone, and I believe the internal
taper of these grinding spindles is #6 B&S taper, held with
a 5/16-18 drawstud. Will be making more mandrels, and
pending a more accurate measurement, I can then say for sure.

--Doozer
 
My KO Lee T & C grinder has a spindle that has a "short" No. 5 B & S taper in the spindle. I have a Hardinge 5-C solid collet without slots that has a No. 5 B & S taper socket. Have a reamer here somewhere, too.
 
Old shop texts universally have, as the illustration of "end mills", a picture of one or more tanged taper B&S end mills. Apparently, as Doozer mentions, the B&S taper was able to hold sufficiently to actually use them as end mills.

They surely never look like any sort of reamer, they have the same form as a modern end mill.
 








 
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