Help to id this old mill

I have an opportunity to buy an old mill from a friend farther down south. He bought it 20 or 25 years ago from his friend's estate. Supposedly it was used to make model train parts. My friend does not know who made the mill and has never finished putting it back together. He is giving me a fantastic price, but I would like to know who made it and a model number. Apparently there are no numbers or makings to help ID the mill. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It looks like a Lewis. They were sold as casting kits to be completed by the owner. Minton made a similar little one, too.

It IS a Lewis, or most of one.....

It seems to be missing the countershaft, as well as the "Z" knee screw drive, and maybe the "Y" handwheel assembly. Those should be on a plate that attaches with the screws on the front of the knee. The oval hole is where the knee screw drive comes out.

There should be a considerable speed reduction in the countershaft, and many people added a backgear. With the backgear, and an overarm with brace to knee, it will take a very reasonable cut.

I have some information that might help with it if you want to get it working.



Here is a crummy pic that shows the front hand cranks, and the optional backgear

Thanks for the info. JST, how ever you can get the information to me would be greatly appreciated. Here are a couple more pictures of the machine and the tooling that comes with it.

Here are the last two pictures.

Looks like you may want to make a couple horizontal arbors, since I do not see any.

What is the spindle taper? Mine has an MT3, which is a bit odd, but better than MT2 as some similar size machines have (Benchmaster). A 30 taper would have been nice. The vertical head has an MT2, which is reasonably standard.

Sent the main info.

JST said:

Looks like you may want to make a couple horizontal arbors, since I do not see any.

What is the spindle taper? Mine has an MT3, which is a bit odd, but better than MT2 as some similar size machines have (Benchmaster). A 30 taper would have been nice. The vertical head has an MT2, which is reasonably standard.

Sent the main info.

Click to expand...

I really don't know anything about the mill. It is still in South Florida area. The man who owns it doesn't really know anything about it either. I wanted to find as much about it as I could so I could tell him and learn something myself.

They are stout and will do real work, as you can see from the slab mill photo. If I make a longer arbor, I will use the 4" wide slab mills on it.... better than a fly cutter for many things.

If you want a stout little mill with vertical and horizontal capability, they are nice. The one weakness is the small overarm, but a set of support arms such as you see in the photo above will fix a lot of that.

That one also seems not to have the backgear. I am not sure how much that hurts, since I have it, and use it to get down to 40 RPM for working tool steel with a 4" milling cutter. I have never tried to get there with belts only.

Here is the final way I run the vertical head. having the motor on the overarm was a pain, as I had to change overarms. This way, I just take off the arbor support and substitute the vertical head and pulley setup.