Pete.
Member
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- 14,142
- Location
- Kent, UK
I just collected this today after getting a call from a nice fellow tipping me off to it's existence. It's a Hardinge Cataract bench lathe - a superbly made precision machine in it's day.
I bought it because of it's pedigree and because I already have a larger Hardinge HLV lathe which is also at 'project status' so they will compliment each other nicely when they are done (even though in truth I'm going to struggle to find a spot for this one). This one has had a bit of a tough life doing what lathes do but fundamentally it's sound. You would-not-believe how heavy the bed is for such a small machine.
Anyway, we all love pics so here they are:
Here's the lathe, with 24 3C collets 3-jaw and 4-jaw 3C chucks and a rotten old flat belt.
Headstock pulley has 2 rings of holes, I think the 4 holes are probably spindle locks and the 60-hole circle is for indexing. No idea what fixes in the holes in the end of the bed but they did do a whole buch of attachments for this type of lathe.
Rear view showing it to be a plain bed, some of them had a tee slot running along the back for thread chasing attachments
Found the serial number under the hammerite on the end of the bed.
Scraping away hammerite also revealed the headstock serial. These machines were very modular so each part had it's own number.
Despite the surface rust the spindle has been protected by the oiled felt wick so hopefully it will all be in good nick in there. I won't attempt to pull the spindle out until all the rust is gone off the spindle end.
I bought it because of it's pedigree and because I already have a larger Hardinge HLV lathe which is also at 'project status' so they will compliment each other nicely when they are done (even though in truth I'm going to struggle to find a spot for this one). This one has had a bit of a tough life doing what lathes do but fundamentally it's sound. You would-not-believe how heavy the bed is for such a small machine.
Anyway, we all love pics so here they are:
Here's the lathe, with 24 3C collets 3-jaw and 4-jaw 3C chucks and a rotten old flat belt.
Headstock pulley has 2 rings of holes, I think the 4 holes are probably spindle locks and the 60-hole circle is for indexing. No idea what fixes in the holes in the end of the bed but they did do a whole buch of attachments for this type of lathe.
Rear view showing it to be a plain bed, some of them had a tee slot running along the back for thread chasing attachments
Found the serial number under the hammerite on the end of the bed.
Scraping away hammerite also revealed the headstock serial. These machines were very modular so each part had it's own number.
Despite the surface rust the spindle has been protected by the oiled felt wick so hopefully it will all be in good nick in there. I won't attempt to pull the spindle out until all the rust is gone off the spindle end.