Thread Cutting on the Hardinge Lathe

[TomG]

Thanks guys.

John: Top slide = compound. I get it. Yes, it's pretty handy for threading.

Ed: Yes, most any plastic is soft enough that you can use the cross slide to cut the entire depth of the thread. The exception would be something that is brittle, like bakelite or maybe Ultem.

Dave: Let's see a pic of your Holbrook, I've never seen one.

Tom

[Hopefuldave]

I'll finish the paint first... It's looking a bit scruffy at the moment! Also, it would need my daughter who's better with a camera than me to take the pics!
I do have a set of pics from the start of my rebuild on photobucket, and I'm planning (once the paint's finished) to put a pictorial thread together with the newer pics... In the meantime, there's a bunch of "before and starting and oh my god, what have I bought" in my photobucket album (hopefuldave), feel free to have a look!

I'm not surprised you've never seen one, Holbrooks are about as rare as rockinghorse droppings, compared to Hardinge, Monarch etc. - I'm not sure what their total production was by the end, but a clue is that mine (1955) was serial number 8861 after about 80 years of production - and all the types shared the one sequence of numbers, so they built an average of two or three a week leaving the works...
They were fantastically expensive, I've heard it said that the Colchester on the factory floor cost as much as the boss's car, the Holbrook in the toolroom as much as his house... Most went to government research labs (mine was in the Armaments Research and Development Establishment at Fort Halstead) or during WW2 into the artificers' workshops on submarines and destroyers, some went to commercial research and development shops, but it tended to be big, wealthy companies, Lucas and the like.

Nice lathes, though.

Dave H. (the other one)