W.C. Young Treadle Lathe

Spring is clean up time in New England and I keep stumbling into great finds. I picked up this W.C. Young treadle lathe a few weeks ago. I have two other treadle lathes, a 1910, 10” South Bend, and a 13” Sebastian. But as they almost always are, they are missing their treadle parts. This lathe is very complete. I think the paint may even be original. It has the change gears, the steady rest, even the wrench seen with the foot pedal is W.C. Young. A good friend, a real Mainer, who is in his eighties summed it up pretty well when he saw it and said, “ Gawd! Now ain’t that cunnin’. “
The first pictures are -as found- condition. The next set are cleaned up a bit.














I hope I'm not going overboard with the pictures, I just think this is a pretty special find and I like to share it with fellow enthusiasts. A few more pictures follow.

More pictures.

Nice machine and I appreciate the photos. Thank you.

A few more thoughts. It seems as Barnes lathes are by far the most common foot powered lathe talked about on the forum. Mike Powell is even casting new parts for them. Are there really more of them than any other? It would be interesting to see production numbers of various makers to know just how many there were, and how rare some machines are.
I also started thinking if I should have polished the bright parts on the Young. I cleaned the paint with mineral spirits than oiled it and polished anything else. I'm sure some would leave the "patina", but the paint was so good, I think the metal looks good polished again. You'll notice on the ways, and the apron, and the flywheel belt surfaces, I just used steel wool and oil and left the staining.

Did I mention I have dial-up? If I have to watch that E-Z BURR ad load one more time I'm smashing my computer.

I think you did it just right. When I stopped by Ed Battison's house one time he was working on a Putnam Planer (perhaps the one that Peter has now?) He had a South Bend lathe in his "pantry" (doesn't every New England house have a pantry out back to keep your lathe in?) and I noticed a very finely curved hand hold for a three ball crank in the lathe.

"Wot you working on?" I queried.

"That's a hand hold for the Putnam planer I'm restoring."

He showed me how he was taking a "skim cut" and using the lathe to restore the hold to smoothness and then polishing it up with emery and crocus cloth.

"Are you sure you want to do that much "restoration?" I said concerned about patina.

Then he showed me the rusted hulk the part came from - no smoothness at all to that handle which apparently had stood outside for at least 20 years and had been an ideal candidate to rust having been burnished to bare metal smoothness by the hand of the machinist who had last used it.

"I'm just trying to get it back to a condition about twenty years prior." he says.

I think the key here is to do the minimum necessary to satisfy the "inner you." Some people don't mind driving their car when it's a little dirty. Others have to "polish the chrome" before they take it out for a Sunday drive.

Of course, this is a variable standard. What works for me may not work for you, either in too much restoration or too little.

Joe

p.s. yes, that EZ Burr thing has just about bored a hole in my skull. The rest of the page won't load unless EZ Burr has done it's thing.

Price we pay for a free/open forum?

Now a word from our sponsors...

Wasn't Cable TV supposed to limit the number of advertisements?

And the Maine Turnpike would be paid off by 1975 and would become a free road.

But the google main page still impresses me. www.google.com Less is more!

treadle mechanism ?

Maynah,

Thanks for posting. The Machine Shop Museum at Tuckahoe Steam & Gas Association has a very similar W C Young lathe, missing the treadle. Could we impose on you for a couple of close-ups of the linkages?

Also I may be blind but there needs to be a ratchet or something to allow / maintain rotation while the pedal is on the return stroke. Where is it?

Thanks,
Jeff Greenblatt

Jeff,
The weight of the flywheel keeps it spinning. If you can see it there is a counter weight on the flywheel. At first I thought it was just to balance the flywheel but I don't think so. When it stops spinning the weight will sink to the bottom of the stroke and the pedal is timed so it is at the top of it's arc. It won't sit at 12:00 or 6:00 which would be dead spots. Like riding a bike, you have to get the top pedal a little past 12:00 to start. You only pump the pedal on the down stroke and let the mass of the flywheel bring it back around to the top again. I will get some pictures of the treadle parts. I'm not sure I explained that very well, but it works very well.

This model is on the front of Cope's lathe book, right to the left of his name.

GREAT job on the clean up of that lathe....... looks like you did it just right, not too much but making it look fantastic. I think there are a lot more foot powered machines out than any other brand by far. I base part of this on the numbers I have seen in my 30 + years of hunting. Also Barnes seems to have had a good distribution throughout the rural areas..... seems about every farm with out power had needed a machine and Barnes filled that need. Also think how long the were in business and how many of their catalogs survive.

Super nice find on your lathe!

There are quite a few seneca falls treadle lathes out there as well. Again, mostly
with the treadle parts MIA, sadly.

BTW the features that are most annoying on dial-up, somehow they don't
work nearly as well if you turn off java and javascript. At this point the
board software does not even require cookies. Just FYI and all.

Thanks for the comments.
Jeff, Here are the pictures of the drive. I know what you mean about thinking there must be a ratchet. I used to think that until I saw this. The fooler is the square shaft that the pedal is attached to does not rotate 360 degrees. It just rocks back and forth and changes reciprocal motion to rotary motion via the offset leg at the end of the flywheel shaft. The picture explains it better than I can. You can also see the only repair the lathe needs at the end of the shaft that attaches to the offset leg. It still works, and should be an easy fix.
Before I said the dead spots are at 12 & 6 o'clock but they are really at 3 & 9 o'clock at the offset leg.

Is it possible to get your toe under the pedal and get it "squished?" Barnes got past that in their table saws by providing a chain and ratchet (like a bicycle.)

There was a guy described in "Fine Woodworking" magazine who created a line of 'built it yerself' pedal powered tools for use in his Middle School woodshop program. (In the "advanced" program the students could build one for themselves.) He was barred from having "power tools" by edict of the School Committee - so he went "around" them. He recycled bicycle components for use on his rather nicely executed flywheel powered tools.

Joe

Edit Later: I see it now. The link is broken. It wouldn't surprise me that the end of the link was made out of lead or some easily cast material. You get your toe under the pedal and wango, the lead breaks and saves you from a broken toe.

Maynah, thanks for the pic. All is now clear.

Jeff

Maynah-

Let me add my voice to thc chorus of people who not only will not chide you for the number of pics of your machine/clean up, but APPRECIATE IT very much....

NICE MACHINE and GREAT JUDGEMENT I think for taking her home and cleaning her up the way you did.....I personally feel that if you can leave somewhat large original extant paint jobs, that's great...'specially on older "historically significant" machines....

of course, I come from the Edision PHonograph and vintage stringed musical instrument collecting worlds, where the original finishes/patina DO have a much more dramatic affect on "originality" and values....so I tend to carry over my views on that to the older equipment, but the equipment world seems more forgiving in this regard....

Granted, there's nothing like a nice original finish, but I think old lathes dont' usually have that part of their personality survive as well over the years of use, neglect, and outside storage.....so....I guess there's arguments on both sides.


ALSO let me add my voice to the chorus of I HATE that D*** easy burr banner and any other high graphic/byte wanton misuse of bandwidth...I have high speed DSL phone internet...whatever they call it, and by far, my most frequented site AND slowest to upload before I can do anything on it is PM because of these moving banner ads....

Possibly, these ads pay for the bills associated with running PM, in which case, I will accept them as necessary evils, but still....I'm with you.....very frustrating and tries my patience every time I sign on so I can see folks like you doing stuff like this to lathes like that......



Chris

Oh, and Maynah-

I too am interested in the Barnes/other treadle lathe survival rates.....

I can only imagine that Barnes made a WHOLE BUNCH of these things and they converted to bench/electric lathes so well is why they survive, or seem to, in such numbers.

As the member Doc told me, since we live close...."I guess you've discovered that we live in the desert waste land of collecting old machines".....

He was right on, and the ONLY cool old thing I've found here on my own was......


...you guessed it, a Barnes 4 1/2 (on it's original velocopede legs, but all other pedal stuff missing) at a Menonite sale close to home...

I grew up in NH, ME, and MA....were i still there, I would be all over the ME yard sales nowadays looking for these things.......

Enjoy your machine for me.....


Chris

The large flywheel and treadle parts, they just seem to evaporate over the
years. A shame. I've been on the lookout for many years to replace the missing
ones from my seneca falls machine. Very rare.

Nice work! What do you know about the cutting tools?

Maynah,
Great find and nice restoration. The cutting tools look like they are forged. I ran across a load of these, in various configurations while cleaning up Bill’s machine shop. Do you know what the vintage is of your cutting tools? Can you post a close up photo? Thanks.

http://s764.photobucket.com/albums/...tion=view&current=forged_tools_3.jpg&newest=1

I saved a little Seneca Falls treadle, but alas, no treadle parts. I do have the pulley/ flywheel though.
Keep up the good work,
J.R.

Hi all,

First, ditto on the deburring ad all the way.

The lathe is a "doll baby" as we say down south and yoiu did just right on cleaning her. Hard to put the patina back in once you take it out. Where there is at least some of the original finsih, faded or not, I think it should be left.

One the number of treadle lathes, Barnes was by far the biggest mfg and started very early. Way back in about 1878, they were marketing a metal lathe. Also as pointed out, they made them in a number of sizes.. 4, 4 1/2, 5, 5 1/2, 6 & 13 with them getting bigger as the numbers went up. No telling how many they made but in the many thousand overall I would say.

Barnes did have a significant name recognition given all the different types of foot powered machinery they made and yes, a large dealer network. Interesting to see the dealers listed in some of their catalogs.

They did stamp a serial number on them so we could probably do some investigating and get some idea.

Next you will find Seneca Falls but they are a long distance behind Barnes. That probably goes for all of the SF foot powered machinery including the scroll saws, table saws, etc. In my opinion, I think SF built a better, more robust machine and they put a serial number at least on their metal lathes. I had a complete 12 in one that as I remember had a 7800 something number. I do think that they sold a number that were line shaft driven and they probably just used the same serial numbering sequence so it might be hard to really establish a good estimate.

After SF, the other manufacturers I have in my collection are Young, Shephard, Shephard Tool Co, Baldwin, Reed, Sebastian May and Spencer in screw cutting versions. There are not many of these lesser known mfg out there.

The Young I have is a hand or speed lathe. It looks like the one you have but does not have the traditional lead screw. The compound slides up and down the metal bed and can be locked in at any place. The tool post can then be moved using the traditional screw adjustment. These hand or speed lathes also had a wood turing attachment and I think were targeted to somebody that did not want to pay the full price for a screw cutting lathe but did want metal cutting ability.

My Young has a serial number stamped in a small slightly raised round area on the right end of the bed. It is F. F. 2347 Not sure what the letters meant unless it was a model designation. I will try and get some pictures and post them here.

My website at Foot Powered Machinery is still very much a work in process with very little content. The mfg list is there and one day I want to get a lot of pictures, info, catalog cuts, et.

Would you mind if I used some of your pictuures of the Youndg lathe on my site in that section?

Those cutters are solid and might well have been forged. I have a 1918 Barens lathe catalog and that is all they offered at the time. They came in different sizes for differnt size lathes.

Don't know when the holder with individual cutters came into play. When you sharpened these too much, you were effective out of tooling instead of buying just a new cutter insert.

Hope some of this helps..

I just love foot powered machinery!!

Thanks Ed







the

Thanks for the comments.
That's a great lathe Jim. I love that "patina".

JR, I'm not sure how old the cutting tools are. I'd guess turn of the century and back. Others here will know their age. The first thumbnail is the tools that came with the Young. The second is some other old tools I had. The third shows a tool made from an old file. Those old timers were resourceful.

I like how tall the Young is. It's made to be operated standing up. I'm taller than average and most lathes are short for me.

I was hoping you would comment Ed. Thanks for the great information. Sure you can use the pictures. Let me know if you want any others. The serial number on mine is 1466 with no letters, on the raised coin, right side of bed. Mine has a wood working tool rest with it also.

Those look like a nice old set of original hand forged cutters.... the guy might of even had some of them before he got his nice new Young lathe. Keep them with it.... it makes the whole package even better and that's hard because this on is about "as good as it gets"