Old Pratt & Whitney Lathe for sale on Syracuse NY Craigslist

No Affiliation with seller. Cross slide and compound are not in the picture but looks to be a nice size and would make a nice project.

Old Pratt & Whitney Co Lathe - tools - by owner - sale

A recent thread of mine resurrected a previous Craigslist posting from over a year before. In the original posting I brought pix to the board via capturing them to "my file" and then referencing the file so the pix "stays" with the thread.

My most recent entry did not include the pix (referencing the Craigslist pix) but the pix had not changed. A record will still exist.

The problem with referencing Craigslist photos, links is that the photos/links come and go as the object is sold, or Craigslist eliminates the posting (usually 45 days)

So we have nothing to reference/compare to going forward.

A good portion of this board is the "reference." Not all is known about machinery popular 100 years ago - and seeing and referring to the physical evidence today can make more known of that time and machinery. And possibly help other historical machines found survive.

So much has been destroyed (Turned into Toyotas) simply because the today owner didn't know what they had. And once gone, there is no getting it back.

This board with your help can help prevent that.

Joe in NH

I'll guess if that is not a quite slow motor that the lathe has been run way too fast since the conversion - in other words the plain bearings for the spindle suffered accordingly. Counter shaft speed for that thing when new was probably less than a 100

Pre dates this

Precision tools : Pratt & Whitney Company : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

And here are your reference photos no longer associated with CL
(iI some how these disappear, there is also a set of them with new names)

johnoder said:

I'll guess if that is not a quite slow motor that the lathe has been run way too fast since the conversion - in other words the plain bearings for the spindle suffered accordingly. Counter shaft speed for that thing when new was probably less than a 100

Pre dates this

Precision tools : Pratt & Whitney Company : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

And here are your reference photos no longer associated with CL

View attachment 310555View attachment 310556View attachment 310558

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I've seen some ridiculously short work areas in some of these older lathes, but this one might just take the cake. The headstock & chuck together eat up over 1/2 of the bed length, unless that is camera lens distortion. Made for very specific applications, I suppose.

Dan

Many thanks John!

The "rise & fall" type saddle COULD possibly date this as a fairly early lathe - but given P&W reputation for "precision tool" and a potentially toolmaker type client base, this feature/design option augmenting accuracy was continued for some years for Pratt & Whitney.

More telling to me would be the "Pratt & Whitney Co. Makers" brass nameplate. I've always kind of assumed these were changed over to a "cast in name" some time in the mid 1880s. Possibly as early as 1882 when P&W showed up at a Boston Machine Tool expo and created a stir with all their machines painted a "deep grey" rather than the common then (since 1876) black.

So perhaps best said as "toolmaker precision lathe circa 1880s."

The short length might give credence to a toolmaker type application. Pratt & Whitney was VERY responsive to customers who needed something "special" - and were willing to pay for it.

Joe in NH

Greg Menke said:

When posting links to craigslist, ebay et al, please note the following forum guidelines;

Guidelines (please see new rule regarding Craigslist/Ebay/equiv posts)

Thanks, mod.

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I apologize for this. My intent was to make forum members aware that this was available for purchase in case anyone was interested in buying it and was not sufficiently aware of this rule.

Mark

DanLinsch said:

I've seen some ridiculously short work areas in some of these older lathes, but this one might just take the cake. The headstock & chuck together eat up over 1/2 of the bed length, unless that is camera lens distortion. Made for very specific applications, I suppose.

Dan

Click to expand...

Do you mean it's the predecessor to the 10EE?

Paolo