email: tony@lathes.co.uk
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"Haswell" of London Watchmakers' Lathe

Other lathes for watchmakers


Almost entirely divorced from the development of industrial-sized machine tools, the evolution of small, high-precision watchmakers' lathes took some interesting turns--including this dead-end "Swiss Universal" and "English Mandrel" (an interchangeable term) model. This design was introduced during the 1700s, possibly by the inventive watchmaker Vauscher, based in what was then the centre of the trade in the Swiss town of Fleurier.
While resembling this type of lathe in its general arrangement, the "Haswell" had a unique configuration. The lathe bed, supported on four unique screw-adjustable feet in the form of elegant truncated square-based pyramids, was constructed from a simple flat plate instead of being of the more usual bar-type square or rectangular type.*
The headstock, with its bevelled-edged base, was secured to the bed by three cross-head screws at the front and two handle-equipped screws at the rear - the unclamping of which allowed the headstock to be slid back and forth.
The compound slide rest assembly - a screw-feed cross slide topped by a screw-feed tool slide - was also arranged to slide up and down the bed, it being guided by a long slot, the slides of which appear to have  provided a positive location. However, an examination of the cross-slide's front face suggests that, originally, it might have been fitted with an adjustable gib strip that bore against the bed's front face.
As compensation for the fact that the tool slide could not be swivelled, the toolpost was arranged to do so - its base being formed as a circular boss clamped down by a screw and with a built-in pointer point to what must have been when new, a degree-marked scale.
Archibald Haswell set up business as a watchmaker in 1835, with Robert Haswell joining him in 1844. In 1858, the business was listed as a 'watch tool warehouse' and based at 49 Spencer Street, London, with the entry only under Robert's name. There is no evidence that Haswell was the maker of the lathe, and it may have been put out for manufacture by one of the many small machine shops in the capital.
* Another watchmakers' lathe with flat-plate bed was the English 
J & T Jones, though its arrangement was rather different.







Other lathes for watchmakers

lathes.co.uk
"Haswell" of London Watchmakers' Lathe
email: tony@lathes.co.uk
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