Machine of the Month: What is that? Part I

We have two brass guards that weren’t associated with a particular machine for many years. Then a video surfaced that had been taken in 1987 by trustee Camiel Thorrez. The subject was a tour of the exhibit floor narrated by Ed Battison. In the video, the brass guards were on “our” Blanchard lathe that’s designed to shape the butt of rifle stocks.

I put “our” in those quotation marks because that lathe is on loan to us. The machine was made by Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Mass., and sold to the British for their Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield. It worked there for about 100 years, then was given to the U.S. Park Service, which loaned it to us.

Interestingly, I recently saw the following picture on the Harpers Ferry Armory Museum website. Their lathe has guards that were undoubtedly made by the same person.
I assume that that lathe also worked long and hard in Britain.

One thing about the guards: they are to protect the machine’s gears from getting clogged with wood chips. If the machine were run with stuffed gears, something in the machine would probably break. They clearly didn’t have the same concerns for their worker’s fingers; neither our machine nor the one at Harpers Ferry has belt guards.

We have a mechanical press that I thought had two pulleys that could be driven by leather flat belts. After many years of believing that, I realized one of these cylinders was a combination brake drum and clutch.

The actual pulley (the cylinder on the right in the picture) would spin continuously. To operate it, the operator would step on a pedal under the work table. This would lift the brake pad out of contact with the outer surface of the brake drum, allowing it to spin. That same pedal pressure would push a conical friction surface into the inside of the same drum. This connected the press’s working mechanism to the pulley, the machine’s power source. The press cycled until the operator stopped pressing the pedal on the right side. Then, the clutch was released, and the brake automatically came on. That disc jutting out to the left is a weight that would disconnect the drive system. There’s also a second pedal on the left that seems to be for stopping in case the mechanism gets stuck in the “on” position.

Among the interesting features of this machine, the large gear that is part of this drive mechanism was broken long ago. It was brazed back together so well that you might not notice it. Well, enough that the relatively coarse gearing probably didn’t object at all. But one gear tooth was apparently wrecked when the gear was broken. Where the tooth had been, the repairman drilled a line of 3 holes very close to each other. He put pins in the holes. They are held tightly by some means, by friction, by being threaded, or by brazing. When they were secure, the repairman filed the new line of pins to approximate the profile of the other teeth.

APM has at least one other place where this kind of tooth repair is used. At the Hagley Museum in Delaware, some gears (not installed on a machine) are on display that look like they ran into a thick-quilled porcupine. They have many restored teeth.

We have a machine that would puzzle almost anyone who might want to identify it. Much of the original machine is gone. It’s for stripping rattan (also spelled “ratan”). Ed Battison got it because he wanted some parts from it, not for its historical value. If he hadn’t mentioned it, we would have no idea what it was.

That illustrates our problem in dealing with these “unknown” devices. Some could be unique wonders of old technology or be best thought of as scrap.