for those who want to remember how far our lathes have come ....

[Bill Noble]

well, as all of these things seem to, a friend handed me a tailstock and
banjo/tool rest from small old cheezy lathe and said "I don't want these any
more, please sell them". And of course he had no idea what they fit - so I
tried the usual - part numbers - no match, logo - never seen it before -
then I remembered the OWWM.com site with the old manuals and catalogs and
stuff. The logo was a diamond with a big H in the middle and some squiggles
around it that might have been other letters, so I figure - let's look at
companies that have an H in a prominent position in their name - so I start
from the top, looking at the text and downloading catalogs that seem
promising - and after only 4 or 5 tries, I found
http://www.owwm.com/mfgIndex/pubdetail.aspx?id=1589, which brings up the
1935 catalog for Herberts Machinery Co. - Los Angeles, CA, and amazingly
enough right there as the first wood lathe in the catalog (on pg 12 of the
PDF) is a lathe with the exact cheap castings as what I had - how cool is
that - the text explains the advantages of a 5/8 inch spindle (!!!), and
touts the cast aluminum tailstock as being "a one-piece heavy casting,
carefully and accurately made" - it's a real piece of art - it's the only
tailstock I've seen where the dead center is just a point turned onto a
screw, which itself forms the tailstock quill.

Anyway, after almost killing myself patting myself on the back, I listed the
item in one of the usual get rich venues and thought I'd come here and brag
about the research approach - and maybe encourage someone else with some
mystery stuff to try the same method to figure out what they have - it
worked for me.

here's the link to it -
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300382362358

--
Bill -
www.wbnoble.com