Early Reed Prentice 14" Heavy Banjo gear arrangement for Compound / Direct feeds

We currently have a Early Reed Prentice 14" Heavy in the shop RPM range 18-432. Serial number is 5286. This model does not have the range selector to the left on the change gear lever. The end/banjo gears get changed to switch between compound and direct for more feed speeds. It is currently set up for compound feed: from feed reverse gears they drive a 28T gear which drives a 40t attached to a 20t that drives a 50t attached to a 25t which drives a 60t attached to the quick change gearbox shaft. Does anyone have a picture or arrangement of the gears for direct feeds.

RPM range 18-432.

Click to expand...

Must be the 8 speed from the early thirties

Notice that you have described a TWO PLANE arrangement. Direct will be A SINGLE PLANE

All this means is the 40-20 and 50-25 compounds will be replaced by an idler of your choice and the 60 (or what ever gear is needed) will move over towards the gear box (there is a spacer that enables this)

(Note these two 2:1 compounds result in a 4:1 relationship - which is the difference between the coarse and fine ranges of threads)

If the 60 is already as close to the gear box as possible, then all you need is an idler of whatever tooth count to replace the two compound gear sets.

If the intent is to cut threads, I'd suggest before ever cutting a thread you put an indicator on mag base on bed ways and tip of indicator on carriage and SEE if it moves .250" per one turn of chuck with QC set for 4 TPI. Easy way to get a heads up on whether that 28 tooth is going to work for you or not - in fact this is a great thing to do before you ever change things around - see if it is "doing right" in one of the finer threads - like 40 TPI - which is .025" per turn of chuck

ON EDIT...add scans showing DIRECT set up from 1931

Might be helpful

http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/2524/15250.pdf

http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/2524/15251.pdf

I'm pretty sure i have the same machine john shows in his thumbnails. Mine is from about 1935-ish. I can take pics of whatever you need. In the hopes of learning something, i'll admit i don't know the difference between direct feeds and compound feeds.

Thanks for the replies, had more time today to work with it. Using the single plane theory I turned around the 50/25t gear which yielded 28t to 40t to 50t to 60t which gave me the correct ratio for direct drive. My buddy calls that the swag theory. Sophisticated wild A__ guess.