Capstan / Turret Lathe General Information

xavier2089 · Oct 3, 2020

Hi all,
I am just after a bit of general information on the types of turret tools and operations on old turret lathes.

The best books from what I can see are Alfred Herbert Ltd's 'How to Lay Out Turret Lathe Tools' and 'Turret Lathe Work'.

Does anybody have these as a PDF file? There was a thread on another chat on this forum but it is dead now... The books themselves seem to be very scarce.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Xavier

Jim Christie · Oct 3, 2020

You could check out the links in post # 5 of this thread.
Help with a Turret Lathe
It would probably be a good thread to follow once Doc gets it running that by the looks of the latest posts should be soon if there aren't any more setbacks .
A few more possibilities that you can read on line or download here.
Full-text Search Results | HathiTrust Digital Library
You could also try on archive.org .

Jim

DocsMachine · Oct 3, 2020

Warner & Swasey's Turret Lathe Operator's Manual has been very useful to me over the years. Copies can be found on eBay for not an absurd amount.

It's fairly comprehensive, in that it covers a lot of what a turret lathe can do- like drilling, boring, reaming, setting bar-turners, etc.- and has fairly extensive sections about how to plan and tool up to produce a part. (Including stuff like determining whether it's better to fully tool up for a short run, which would take time, or use shortcut methods that would make the run itself take longer, but would be faster to set up for. Not really the kind of thing home-shop types are going to be concerned with, but there it is.)

However, most sections it covers are not terribly much more than overviews. There's definitely some good data there, but a lot of it is one or two sentences describing the way to do it, but not really explaining why, or giving any examples.

I'd be interested, myself, to find a copy, PDF or otherwise, of those Herbert Alfred books.

What is it you plan on doing? Really, the W&S book covers most of what you'll need to know, and unless you wind up needing some complex setup, will easily get you started.

Doc.

DocsMachine · Oct 4, 2020

Found a PDF of How to Lay Out Turret Tools, although you have to register in order to download it.

And it's actually a very informative work. There's a ton of clever setups and tools in there, stuff not even hinted at in the W&S book. I'd love to find an original copy.

Doc.

Tyrone Shoelaces · Oct 4, 2020

DocsMachine said:
Warner & Swasey's Turret Lathe Operator's Manual has been very useful to me over the years. Copies can be found on eBay for not an absurd amount.

It's fairly comprehensive, in that it covers a lot of what a turret lathe can do- like drilling, boring, reaming, setting bar-turners, etc.- and has fairly extensive sections about how to plan and tool up to produce a part. (Including stuff like determining whether it's better to fully tool up for a short run, which would take time, or use shortcut methods that would make the run itself take longer, but would be faster to set up for. Not really the kind of thing home-shop types are going to be concerned with, but there it is.)

However, most sections it covers are not terribly much more than overviews. There's definitely some good data there, but a lot of it is one or two sentences describing the way to do it, but not really explaining why, or giving any examples.

I'd be interested, myself, to find a copy, PDF or otherwise, of those Herbert Alfred books.

What is it you plan on doing? Really, the W&S book covers most of what you'll need to know, and unless you wind up needing some complex setup, will easily get you started.

Doc.

It's Sir Alfred Herbert Doc.
Anything they produced was quality, machines, literature etc.

Regards Tyrone.

thermite · Oct 4, 2020

DocsMachine said:
Found a PDF of How to Lay Out Turret Tools, although you have to register in order to download it.

And it's actually a very informative work. There's a ton of clever setups and tools in there, stuff not even hinted at in the W&S book. I'd love to find an original copy.

Doc.

UK paper? Seek in the UK. A PM member, or acquaintance-of, is probably the most LIKELY source.

Email these folks and ask:

[email protected]

Strong on used books. VERY!

I never miss it when in London, have picked out as many as three crates in a single visit, though that IS well above my "usual" half to one, and more on history than technology, but "not only".

This one was found downstairs, but even Amazon can get it;

https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Machine-Tools/dp/0262180138

Quinto box up and shipped to the USA at VERY reasonable rates, and there is no duty on books.

Greg Menke · Oct 4, 2020

Also published by Warner Swazey, they had a 1920's smaller book "Modern Tooling Methods for Turret Lathes" by M.E. Lange. In my view superseded by the Turret Lathe Op Manual and similar it does show how the previous generation of turret lathes were set up. Obviously there is much overlap but the less evolved tooling systems and methods are simpler. Don't know if a pdf is available- I got both books from ebay.

johnoder · Oct 4, 2020

Backwards approach - the readily available TOOLS by W&S will not fail to give you an idea of what was available for the various sized machines

Other makes similar - like Gisholt's twenty page listing of tooling from the thirties - for just the saddle type machines

thermite · Oct 4, 2020

johnoder said:
Backwards approach - the readily available TOOLS by W&S will not fail to give you an idea of what was available for the various sized machines

Other makes similar - like Gisholt's forty page listing of tooling from the thirties - for just the saddle type machines

Yah, but one needs BOTH...and an old movie or some hands-on experience, too.

Otherwise? You look at a weirdly shaped tool and are in the same boat as 'apl' programmers who could put a whole world of procedures underneath a single "special character".

Then show that to another apl programmer with an evil grin and say:

"Betcha can't guess what THIS does!"

It's just that "different" a universe from conventional lathe single-point tooling.

DocsMachine · Oct 4, 2020

Tyrone Shoelaces said:
It's Sir Alfred Herbert Doc.

-Yeah, yeah, so I'm apparently dyslexic.

The more I go through that "Lay-out" book, the more amazed I am at the stuff they came up with to get work out of a turret. Radius turners, taper attachments, profile cutters, tapered threading using chasers (which throughout the book is rather hilariously called "screwing") and so on.

The more modern ('50s-'60s) W&S "tools" books have actually been pretty handy, but they can't hold a candle to some of the stuff shown in that Alfred Herbert book.

That said, a lot of that is, admittedly, pretty esoteric- I mean, when's the last time any of us had to profile a 16-pounder cannon shell?

But the book is still full of quite clever ideas- like how to turn a 3-jaw chuck into a one-jaw:

And the quite simple idea of using a 3-jaw with removable jaws as a faceplate:

Doc.

john.k · Oct 11, 2020

The ring cam end of a magneto (fig 8)......I have several JAP motorbike engines ,and every part is machined in a capstan/turret lathe......even the top surface of a SV cylinder has concentric turning marks......Another well know picture in Herbert Lit is turning the mating face and bearing bores of an AMC gearbox shell.

xavier2089 · Oct 12, 2020

Thanks all for the replies.
Jim Christie, I ended up going to the HathiTrust Digital Library and have started downloading it page by page. Then I'll have to combine all of the PDF's. A PITA to be honest but there aren't many other options.
DocsMachine, I bought a Herbert Capstan 2D on the cheap simply because I thought it would come in handy for some odd jobs. I was just interested in some possible set ups and the machine's potential. So really just to satisfy my curiosity. Some of the ideas like the pictures above also come in handy from time to time- things I know that I'd never think of/ come up with myself.

DDoug · Oct 12, 2020

Here is a scan from the later "automatics" W&S made, very similar to their
turret lathes as far as tooling envelope goes.

Note how they show the part, the tools for each sequence,
and the multiple tool usage.

crrmeyer · Oct 12, 2020

DocsMachine said:
Found a PDF of How to Lay Out Turret Tools, although you have to register in order to download it.

And it's actually a very informative work. There's a ton of clever setups and tools in there, stuff not even hinted at in the W&S book. I'd love to find an original copy.

Doc.

Search for the title on abebooks.com

I see the available starting at $27 with shipping

DocsMachine · Oct 12, 2020

crrmeyer said:
Search for the title on abebooks.com

I see the available starting at $27 with shipping

-Thanks, CR. Ordered the one original print they had. (I prefer the old books, even though a reprint would be more practical.)

Doc.

DocsMachine · Oct 21, 2020

Got my copy in from Abebooks today, good condition, clean pages, top-quality print. Hand-inscribed inside the front cover by an H. Pearson, 1920.

Kind of like the Warner & Swasey book, it basically gives a series of examples, both of how factory-issued tools work, as well as those custom made for a specific task. (The W&S book sticks pretty rigidly to factory tooling.)

Some very clever setups in there. Oh, sure, long obsoleted by CNC, of course, but still a very interesting look at how they had to do things in the carbon-steel and leather-belt days.

Doc.

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Capstan / Turret Lathe General Information

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