06-19-2016, 09:18 PM
One of my colleagues at work, George, is an avid collector of vintage toys and models. He told me the other day that he had bought a bloke's entire model train collection and along with it had acquired a little machine of some sort, he was wondering whether it might be some kind of lathe accessory or something. When he described it to me I said it sounded like he might have scored a watchmaker's lathe or similar or if he was really lucky it might be a Unimat.
He brought it in to work this week so I could have a look at it, sure enough it is a lovely little Unimat of approximately 1960 make, with the Selecta brand badge.
George was hoping that I might be interested in buying the machine but it is a little on the small side for my tastes.
Unfortunately the headstock spindle thread has been damaged and the internal thread in the chuck has also been damaged, I suspect that the chuck has been cross-threaded onto the spindle at some stage.
I told him I should be able to repair the damaged threads so I have brought it home to do that and he can then put it on the market in full working order. The headstock and tailstock threads are the same and there is a faceplate that will thread onto the tailstock spindle and provide a nice square support to run a die over the headstock spindle, I'm hoping that it will clean up ok by doing that.
There is some writing under the lid of the wooden box indicating that this was a gift to someone 'from dad' in 1960. There is also a price of 40 pounds 10 shillings (I don't have the appropriate symbols to insert for that!) which would have been a considerable sum of money at the time.
He brought it in to work this week so I could have a look at it, sure enough it is a lovely little Unimat of approximately 1960 make, with the Selecta brand badge.
George was hoping that I might be interested in buying the machine but it is a little on the small side for my tastes.
Unfortunately the headstock spindle thread has been damaged and the internal thread in the chuck has also been damaged, I suspect that the chuck has been cross-threaded onto the spindle at some stage.
I told him I should be able to repair the damaged threads so I have brought it home to do that and he can then put it on the market in full working order. The headstock and tailstock threads are the same and there is a faceplate that will thread onto the tailstock spindle and provide a nice square support to run a die over the headstock spindle, I'm hoping that it will clean up ok by doing that.
There is some writing under the lid of the wooden box indicating that this was a gift to someone 'from dad' in 1960. There is also a price of 40 pounds 10 shillings (I don't have the appropriate symbols to insert for that!) which would have been a considerable sum of money at the time.
Lathe (n); a machine tool used in the production of milling machine components.
Milling Machine (n); a machine tool used in the production of lathe components.
Milling Machine (n); a machine tool used in the production of lathe components.
Hope I get some more use out of it in future. Closest feed rate on my lathe is .048 or something- can't remember exactly now, it's been more than 10 seconds since I looked.
The Unimat will have to wait.