Thread: TOS Lathe - SV-18R (Also known by the brand name MAS or ZBROJOVKA)

Gday all

I own an old (1952) Czechoslovakian TOS SV-18R Lathe that I am restoring back to OEM condition (a job of unknowns as well as knowns as many here well know). I was able to buy it from one of the surviving sons who was in the Sydney family engineering business "Baldwin Engineering" (if I remember the name correctly). They were well known for their manufacturing of bogie'd cane fields locomotives and underground locomotives. The lathe came very well equipped with multiple chucks etc.

I shipped it across to Perth and am now in the slow process of cleaning, fixing and modifying it, not helped by some damage being done to it in the shipping process by uninformed forklift drivers. This will include a full electrical rewire when all the mechanical things are done as the old electrics are old and somewhat iffy.

So far I have not found anyone else who owns one of these semi-toolroom lathes.

That is by way of background information.

Having just bought a Varnamo shaper, I was re-looking at the "Show us your shaper" forum and noticed in a post by Toggy regarding his Macson shaper that the photos showing the "new" shaper also showed one of these TOS lathes in the background. It has a distinctive shape and I have mine on the brain a bit, so it jumped out at me and I could not help noticing it. No conspiracy, just like anyone else who recognises someone else having the same item of equipment as themselves.

Anyway, that started me thinking as to whether anyone else on the forum has one of these lathes or has operated one. They are a good machine and I have been gladdened by the quality of the build that I have found in my stripping/refurbishing of it. Cast iron was plentifully used and of pretty good quality in terms of metal and casting technology. For example, having stripped all the paint and old bog off the machine as it was quite deteriorated with age and coolant/oil/other liquids, I found that the combined paint/bog was on average only two to three millimetres thick, with very few places having much more. And so on ad nauseum.

Anyway, I was just wondering if Toggy and I are the only ones out there with these lathes?

Regards

Quentin