Thread: Impressive home made lathe

I came accross this homemade lathe on ebay about 18 months ago. Apparently it was hand built/machined by a toolmaker and nearly finished except for the final tailstock base machining and the fabrication of the guards and a few other cosmetics.

I was umming an' arhhing whether to buy it and was corresponding with the seller when someone else from Bendigo or Ballarat bought it as a Buy It Now. Another case of "he who hesitates is lost"

Any way I did happen to get the vertical mill that was a hand made machine to match the lathe and is what I now use as my mill/drill.

Some pics below of the 2 machines.

Just in case anyone missed what he built the lathe for go read the original thread of the sale of these tools Borys has put up a pdf of why he built the lathe, then photos of the finished item

Deceased Tool Maker's Equipment Sale - Page 3 - Woodwork Forums

Hi,
Another nicely built lathe, and that mill looks like a nice unit as well.
How much did that lathe sell for? It's sad to see guys like pass away, and it is always fun hanging out with them in the shed, even as a visitor.

You have a nice bit of history their.

Dave

Originally Posted by Metmachmad

I came accross this homemade lathe on ebay about 18 months ago. Apparently it was hand built/machined by a toolmaker and nearly finished except for the final tailstock base machining and the fabrication of the guards and a few other cosmetics.

I was umming an' arhhing whether to buy it and was corresponding with the seller when someone else from Bendigo or Ballarat bought it as a Buy It Now. Another case of "he who hesitates is lost"

Any way I did happen to get the vertical mill that was a hand made machine to match the lathe and is what I now use as my mill/drill.

Some pics below of the 2 machines.

theres still pattern makers out there (working cnc and auto cad 3D), but theres someting special about a patternmaker of yesteryear. real skill, quality, insperational.

Originally Posted by Dave J

Hi,
Another nicely built lathe, and that mill looks like a nice unit as well.
How much did that lathe sell for? It's sad to see guys like pass away, and it is always fun hanging out with them in the shed, even as a visitor.

You have a nice bit of history their.

Dave

I think the lathe sold for about $1800 to someone in either Bendigo or Ballarat. I will relate the story of the lathe and miill as it was told to me by the previous owner.

The 2 machines were hand built from scratch by a toolmaker named E C Rogers. This man must have been born around the year 1910. He was making the machines for his retirement (about 1975) and had nearly completed both of them and he fell ill and passed away, at about his retirement age.

This left the two machines with his widow, who had no real use for them so she gave them to a family friend. This friend had no real use for the two machines so he stored them in an unused corner of a wharehouse somewhere in Melbourne (maybe near Preston, but I'm not sure). They sat there covered from about 1976 through to about 2000 when the wharehouse was sold, to the man that I bougfht the mill from.

This man had ideas of using the lathe and mill in his garage under his house in Rosebud, on the Mornington Peninsular. After about 10 years of storing them in his garage, he realised that his workshop under his garage was never going to happen and decided to sell the machines. He listed the lathe first on ebay, which was the deal I missed out on, but he offered the mill/drill for a couple of hunderd dollars which I gleefully accepted. The mill is now in my workshop, It has 6 speeds ie- 250. 350, 550, 800, 1150 and 1550 RPM.

I call the mill "The Rogers" after its maker, E C Rogers, what a toolmaker he must have been!