Introduced in the mid 1930s the 6-inch by 20 or 30-inches between centres "Hogarth" V.L.15 was advertised as a high-speed production lathe … designed for high-speed steel turning with Widia tools and also for brass and aluminium alloys. With its restricted number of spindle speeds and power-feed rates the lathe would indeed have been suitable only for a limited range of repetition tasks and quite unsuitable as a general-purpose centre lathe. The machine was strongly built with its chilled cast-iron bed 10-inches wide, of very deep section and without a gap. A pair of outer V ways guided the carriage whilst an inner V and flat aligned set-over, No. 2 Morse taper tailstock. The bed was carried on a heavy cast-iron under-drive stand containing a large-frame 2.5 h.p. 2-speed 720/1440 r.p.m. motor mounted on a hinged plate. An intermediate countershaft, running in ball races, was fitted above the motor, and connected to a pedal, that allowed the flat drive belt to be slackened and moved across its 2-step pulley. Only 4 all-belt-drive speeds of 500, 700, 1000 and 1400 were available but, with the drive to the 1-inch bore taper-roller bearing headstock passing through a combination clutch and brake unit to allow quick starts and stops, these would have been sufficient for a number of simple, repetitive jobs.
Power sliding and surfacing was fitted, driven from a keyed powershaft driving through an overload clutch and connected to a 3-speed gearbox driven directly by V-belt from the headstock spindle: the rates of feed were: 0.0008, 0.0016 and 0.0031-inches per revolution of the spindle. The apron was of the same design used on "Hogarth" centre lathes with double-wall construction, all-steel gears, an oil bath in the base and the usual kind of worm-and-wheel feed take-off.
The cross slide was especially wide and rugged and both it and the top slide were fitted with micrometer dials. The top slide could be swivelled through 360-degrees and a 4-way toolpost was supplied as standard.  A suggestion by the importers was that the the machine could also be supplied ready fitted for special-purpose production with such extras as fine feeds, special slides rests, etc..