I am on a Quest....

[Tony Wells]

I've seen that too. It seems easier to make the bed, with grinding even, but the head and tailstock would need to match that profile precisely, and that would be a little harder than the bed.

 

[rickard]

Hi Tony if it helps I'm on the same Quest man

 

[Tony Wells]

I love that Fleurier! I don't know the make of the first one, but that's kind of what I have in mind. Too bad it's on the west coast. Not much chance I'll make it out there any time soon.

I don't suppose you caught the make of the first one, did you?

I can't really decide to go with an art inspired design or a modern approach. That's another reason I am researching.

 

[HMF]

Check this site out if you haven't already:

http://www.csparks.com/watchmaking/Lathes.html

I have used the lathe to polish pivots at my mentor's shop. They are polished by hand using a special pivot file, followed by jewelers rouge. We also drill holes into arbors to replace broken pivots. At home, I have a Sherline to do these functions.

Also check out the Horological Tools forum at www.nawcc.org : http://mb.nawcc.org/forumdisplay.php?13-Horological-Tools for a lot of info on lathes.

One of the foremost authorities is Jerry Kieffer jlkieffer@charter.net. (It would be great if he would visit here).


:tiphat:Nelson

 

[Tony Wells]

Have those sites in my Favorites, and have spent a lot of time browsing them. Great information on them.

 

[HMF]

Have those sites in my Favorites, and have spent a lot of time browsing them. Great information on them.

Reach out to Jerry- he is a teacher of the use of these machines, and knows a great deal. He is very willing to share.


:tiphat:Nelson

 

[mckay3d]

Hi Tony,
How is the quest going? I have several watchmakers lathes and would be glad to take pics and send dimensions. Have you acquired a copy of Ward Goodrich's book "the Watchmakers' Lathe" ? Although it was written in 1902 it has a lot of good info and diagrams. There are reprints on eBay.
Regards... Maurice

 

[stupoty]

If your after out of copywrite books on watch makeing , includeing the one mentioned in the last post you should try the internet archive, hears a link to the googdrich book, (at least theirs one other website as interesting as this one ;-)

http://archive.org/details/watchmakerslathe00good


Hears a search for some others

http://archive.org/search.php?query=Watchmakers AND mediatype:texts

happy reading,

stuart

 

[pebbleworm]

Here are a couple on my local craigslist:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/tls/3722852967.html

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/jwl/3658978405.html

I like to see how the previous owners had them set up. If you used one of the scattergun craigslist search engines you could turn up a lot of similar listings pretty quickly.

 

[Tony Wells]

That Levin is certainly a nice machine, but I am going more for the classical look. Probably some modern features, but love the lines of the older style lathes. Not a bad price either I think. Rather have the desk setup.....I think. If I wanted to start building instruments for a living, then the Levin shown would be the way to go, I'm sure.

Love the cheese platter in the desk. Good idea for keeping tooling clean, yet displayed. I have a couple of those the wife dislikes, so I guess the shop gets them.

Good book links too. Some of those I have read, some not.

A kind soul has given me a head start to my build, and I hope I can repay that kindness in some way. When I build the parts for this project, I'll document everything I do, and try to post it as I go, although that will actually be a hobby time investment for me, and in my shop unfortunately I have little time for fun. So it may take a while, but I'd like to share it with you guys. And you can tell me where I go wrong.