How Colchester Used to Make 'Em

[SnakeyJ]

A great piece of period footage and advertising for Colchester Lathes - lots of detail on the full manufacturing process and well worth watching....

 

[Janderso]

Watching them induction harden each gear tooth is something you would never see today.
Since I have a Colchester, made in England around this time period, I find this video to be very satisfying.

 

[SnakeyJ]

Engineering - a bit of a lost art nowadays, I particularly liked the bed casting, machining and induction hardening - lost arts on this side of the pond

 

[Janderso]

Just for fun, I looked up the Gamet bearings for my lathe. In case someday I got a wild hair. (there is nothing wrong with the ones I already have!!)
Those 3 Gamet ultra precision bearings would run $3,656 plus tax and shipping.
I paid $5,000 for the lathe.
Holy smokers.

Engineering - a bit of a lost art nowadays, I particularly liked the bed casting, machining and induction hardening - lost arts on this side of the pond

I wonder how they do it today? (gear hardening I mean)
The castings are beautiful. Plenty of craftsmen working in those plants.

 

[Bob Korves]

Off topic, but I once owned one of the vans shown at 24:00 in the video, a 1960 Thames 10 CWT, model 400e. Mine was left hand drive to suit American roads, and was the delivery van body type, not a passenger van. It was a crude but simple and robust vehicle, and I enjoyed driving the rare (in the USA) machine around town. It was originally purchased and operated by the local Coca Cola bottling company. It was similar in size to a Volkswagen van, but front engine, rear wheel drive.

Thames (commercial vehicles) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Janderso]

Looks like a chick magnet Bob. I bet you had to beat them off with a stick, oh, this didn’t come out quite right

 

[Bob Korves]

Looks like a chick magnet Bob. I bet you had to beat them off with a stick, oh, this didn’t come out quite right

I won't touch that with a 10 foot pole, Jeff...

 

[Janderso]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha

 

[Sparweb]

Thank you - great video!
I used to work for an engineering company that had a Colchester lathe in the shop. My favourite.

9:13 - "Zinc chromate primer makes a good base for the paint" and the guy sprays it on with no mask on. How times have changed!

 

[john.k]

Yeah ,that probably explains why none of my friends have made 75,.....however ,I took precautions ....I used to turn my head to one side .....cant say safer than that.