My blacksmith friend Peter Ross called last week. “I bought a couple lathes in an auction. Could you help me move them this afternoon?”
This can be a fearsome request, for Peter has a habit of buying machinist lathes weighing in the thousands of pounds. Fortunately, the lathes he bought were two old (probably 19th century) treadle lathes, complete with hand forged hardware. Not so heavy. They are really cool and quite rare. They will require a little fiddling and a new treadle before they run well, but everything moves freely and should be easily fixed up. Email Peter if you are interested. Here’s some photos of one of them (the other is similar, with a heavier wheel):
That is really interesting. Like it very much