4 Part Video Series About The Current Myford Lathes

[Overbuilt and Overkill]

Hopefully no one here has already provided a posted link to these videos elsewhere in this forum. While I've never owned or used any Myford lathe, there's some here who have them. And at one time not that long ago there lathes were pretty much the universal standard for Model Engineer's, at least in the U.K. they were. The ML 7 and Super 7 are also about the most adaptable lathe I know of with probably hundreds of modifications and improvements designed and built by users including J.A. Radford and G.H. Thomas detailed in the Model Engineer magazines and books over the years.

Part 1 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dTQsSs-Nzs" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dTQsSs-Nzs</a>

Part 2 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyzsJRZPE7I" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyzsJRZPE7I</a>

Part 3 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk8lHNAzpYo" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk8lHNAzpYo</a>

Part 4 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmccytgX058" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmccytgX058</a>

Unfortunately and imo the videos are all mostly a fluff piece and could have been much more informative had they shown how the lathes actually get machined, ground and assembled while maintaining the critical 3 dimensional alignments and then each area properly checked. What there in house quality controls and allowable + - deviations really are would sell far more machines than what the very limited details in the videos present. There is a bit about the history and some early details about the start of Myford Lathes I hadn't known before. For anyone with a Myford, the spare parts availability and rebuild option might be of some use. I also thought the few details about the method they use today for embedding the dro scales and reader heads inside the cross slide was of interest and could be of use for doing the same on other brands of lathes as well.   

[Chipswitheverything]

Agree that these videos provide little information that a flick through a few brochures would not give.  Curiously, it doesn't say where the current Myfords are being produced.
 I was lucky, when I was a student in Nottingham in the early/mid 1970's , and had an ML7 lathe back then  ( a Super 7B from 1976, still my current lathe...) to be given the privilege of a tour of the Myford works at Beeston, not far from Notts University, accompanied by Cecil Moore, the founder of Myford.  Mr Moore was then quite an elderly man, but was still active in the factory, which was extensive, with castings aging in the yard and every part of the machining process being done on the site, through to packing and despatch.  At that time the industrial grinders were being made there also, and used for aspects of the lathe manufacture.  It was a fascinating glimpse into the company that has given me and so many other model engineers such interest and capacity.   Dave

[Overbuilt and Overkill]

Yes I'm quite sure that would have been a very fascinating tour of the original Myford's Dave. I'm a bit envious.  Google indicates the current Myford head office as Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire. I'm unsure if that's also where and what appears to be a pretty small and limited in house part production, part storage, painting, grinding and assembly area might be. Videos can sometimes show false surface finishes, but the condition of the internal tail stock bore shown in the #3 video at the 3:52 mark seems to be quite a bit worse than what I'd expect for what would almost for sure be an internally ground and honed to finish size high precision bore. They have added the option of a full poly V belt drive and VFD which should provide an extremely smooth running machine.

But going by at least what's shown in these videos and what I can find on their web site, it seems their still using the same threaded spindle nose as the only version. Yes it works well enough and has proven so on probably 100's of thousands of various lathe sizes & brands. There's obviously better, and even more so with that VFD where the lathe might be run in reverse, or use the almost instant braking it's capable of. For at least the Connoisseur large bore model and maybe available on the others, they kept the clutch. A smart choice imo and something seriously lacking on many of today's larger industrial lathes. It's naive to think it's possible to obtain good long term durability and high accuracy at a low price. But at almost 11,000 BPS for a lightly equipped large bore Connoisseur, it's the same problem the original Myford factory had before they closed the doors for good and that high price for what is essentially a 7" lathe. Surprisingly it seems there's enough well heeled buyers around who can keep this smaller company of the same brand going. I wish them well and I'd love to have one as a second lathe, but unfortunately there well outside what I can afford.

[Chipswitheverything]

Thanks for the reply and comment.   Yes, I find the price of the recent high spec "Myfords" a bit extraordinary.  By contrast, here in the UK, I have seen some s/h ,nice, power cross feed and gear-box examples tending to be sold more cheaply than used to be the case, particularly the "grey" era ones rather than the "green" ones.  If carefully used just by a model engineer from new ( like mine! ), their condition can be excellent and represent a good buy, particularly if they have good make, Burnerd, Pratt,  chucks and so on.  I suspect that the age profile of model engineers has released quite a few good examples in recent times....   Dave

[Jo]

A bit of the early history:

Myford lathes were designed and built in an old Lacemaking factory in Nottingham. If you find an old Myford advert you will see it calls the factory building the "Neville Works":



Who was this "Neville" and how did the building end up as an engineering works?

Charles and William Neville were (machine) lacemakers who built themselves a substantial lacemaking factory in Beeston in 1880. Their aim with such a large building was to attract local Lacemakers as tenants as well as to house their own lacemaking activities. A recognisable feature of this building was the large windows and the lantern roof where the bobbins were wound. Power was supplied to the building by means of a boiler and steam engine, with the boiler also providing hot water to heat the building. The Lacemaking trade did well but over the interwar years lacemaking fell on hard times and the building was sublet to tenants of other trades.

Tennents began to include engineering companies which may well have been a result of Ralph Neville's (son of original builder) life-long interest in engineering and model engine making  Ralph would have clearly recognised that there was a need for a small inexpensive lathe for metal work and I wonder how much of an influence he had in what was to come  . In 1934 Cecil Moore, who had himself worked as a lacemaker in his earlier years, started up the firm that was to eventually to take over the whole factory in the lantern space: Myford Engineering Limited. By the 1950's Myford was the sole occupier of the building and it was commonly known locally as the "Myford's Factory".

So why did someone with the name Moore call his company "Myford"? It was his grandmother's maiden name 

Myford continued trading at the Beeston factory until 2011 when it was liquidated and the owners of RDG brought out the rights, spares and patterns for producing the lathes.


The beautiful Neville Lacemaking factory was recently demolished  and is now another modern housing estate and the only clue to its former glory is the name of one of the roads 

Jo

[Overbuilt and Overkill]

Ok let's try it again since this site went offline while trying to make my last post. 

Yes I'd agree, even from here in North America I've watched those prices drop a bit for excellent condition lightly used Super 7's compared to even 5-8 years ago Dave. I keep a random check on the Home & Workshop Machinery web site for general information even though there prices would be at the higher end. If I was in the UK? I think finding one of those and adding the big bore head stock, spindle, poly V belt drive and that VFD option would still be much, much cheaper than one of the factory new Connoisseur models.  South Bend over here probably went out of business due to the closing of the majority of high school shop classes since they were always a huge part of SB's customer base. Without that I think they had to close the doors for much the same reasons Myford did. The production costs got well above what most individuals were willing to pay. I also suspect the very high prices for those new Myfords still doesn't leave much of a profit ratio considering what those castings, grinding and machining of each part now does to the bottom line. And less today appreciate what that accuracy and durability really is compared to any sub 1,000 British pound lathe shaped object from the far east. Roughly 20? yrs ago the original Myford business had a factory rebuilt long bed Super 7 once owned by George Thomas. I almost bought it due to it's history and my respect for George. That threaded spindle & small through hole still turned me off enough I decided against doing so because I wanted to use it and not make some kind of shrine out of it. Sometimes I still regret that choice.

Thank you Jo, while I did know the original Myford location was in Nottingham, I don't recall seeing pictures of the actual building, hearing the history, or knowing the origins of where that Myford name came from. Since yours is the first time I've read about that detail, I doubt many do today. And I also knew about RDG buying the remnants and Myford name, but again there's no mention of what I think is an important detail in those videos about even that. So the involvement of RDG in the current Myford Lathes location seems to be a bit murky. Partial, majority or only business owner at that location? Since Myford started in 1934, then almost for sure they ended up with a massive boost in sales at the start and continuation of WW II a few years later. Everything I've read indicates the post war 1945-1960's were pretty lean years in the UK, so probably that's true for Myford as a business as well. Interesting how Ralph Neville with the same hobby as ours may well have had at least some influence in the early years of Myford. Highly doubtful anyone with our interests wouldn't be paying close attention to what was going on in the same building. That would be for most of us almost irresistible. 

[Chipswitheverything]

Interested in Jo's information from those early days, and OAO's comments.  I remember that long bed Myford lathe that GHT had. It was given to him as far as I know, by Myford, partly as a thank you for all the extra interest in the company's lathes that George's many articles and projects had helped to spawn, and also so that he had an up to date example of a Myford to help with designing or taking pictures.
 The short bed lathe that he always used and had extensively modded with his designed improvements, was rather older, late fifties perhaps.  GHT had had his workshop extended ,quite late in life, and the long bed was under the window in the new portion, but in fact he just about never used it at all, the "old faithfull" being so familiar and very equal to the jobs.  That fact might make OAO feel a bit happier about not having made the purchase!   I have an idea that the Super 7 lathe that had all the modifications went with other workshop gear to Neil Hemingway, with whom GHT was in close collaboration over the castings and availability of the Pillar tool and other project designs.  Dave

[GWRdriver]

Yes, I find the price of the recent high spec "Myfords" a bit extraordinary.

Hello Dave,
Well that's a new one on me . . . I wasn't aware "Myfords" were once again being produced, but the extraordinary price wouldn't surprise me. 

. . . and gear-box examples tending to be sold more cheaply than used to be the case, particularly the "grey" era ones rather than the "green" ones..... Dave

This comment prompts a question . . . I've read comments which allude to a difference in desirability between the colors but I never saw an explanation.  I have a grey ("grey era"?) Super-7 and have wondered what the difference is.  I knew the original owner and origins of my machine, how it go over here, etc, but I've not been able to find a serial number.  It's supposed to be stamped in the bed, but it's not there.  I suspect it was made in the late 1970s.

Harry

[Overbuilt and Overkill]

Well this has evolved and returned much more information than I thought I might be providing others with those rather poor informative video links.  But I hadn't known most of George's re-design efforts and then modifications were done to his older standard length Myford, or where most of his shop equipment and tooling ended up. And nice to hear Neil was the recipient, if anyone would respect and look after it properly he would. I had run across a mention somewhere in the past about George being given at least one new lathe by Myford and for the reasons you mentioned Dave. Interesting after all this time to find out that same long bed was one of them.

To me and as long as any new information is being added, I've never cared about a thread I've ever started going off topic by anyone. But it sounds like your someone who had actually been in Georges shop Dave? If so I wonder if you or anyone else can answer a question I've had for a long time. In my opinion George had a very rare combination of gifted skills. Almost an artists eye for proportion, a high appreciation for tool maker quality machining & design, the ability and skills to do the same himself, and was imo a true craftsman. Yet I can't recall ever seeing any details about what his working career really was. He did mention a few times in his books about the "works" he was apparently employed at, but never what they were or what he did there. And since he mentioned those Herbert indexing tool posts at those same works and a "star turner" there who taught him a few things, then it was obviously a machine shop of some type.

As far as I know Harry I've seen no detail yet that there's any difference between how the lathes are set up or with what options for the colors those Super 7's are painted. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and not that it makes any difference at all, but to me that turquoise color is a bit garish for what should be on a machine tool. I'd take that proper grey you have instead. Or in a pinch the RAL green Deckel and others in Europe painted there machines.  Very odd you can't find your Myford serial number though. A shot in the dark guess, maybe the lathes destined for export were stamped elsewhere. But serial numbers are just that, easier if they wanted to differentiate a lathe being exported by adding a letter or number prefix to the usual serial number and in the normal location would make more sense. Mistakes happen, so maybe it somehow got through QC without one? Inbound customs in the U.S. would absolutely require that serial number because it's always part of the country of origin paper work, so the original export papers would have it which I highly doubt you'd have. Rarely are machine tool shipping crates opened by customs and inspected in detail, so not having one still doesn't mean much from that perspective.

[Charles Lamont]

For a very brief period somewhere around 1978 I worked with George Thomas' brother Bill, he was recovering from a heart attack, and was assigned light duties, one of which was to assist me with getting a (190kW) pump test facility built. I was under strict instruction to avoid raising the blood pressure of a notoriously irascible bloke. I don't know the exact history of who owned what and when, but between them the brothers owned a number of engineering businesses based in Totton, just West of Southampton. One of these was coachbuilder Hampshire Car Bodies, a firm that found itself, more or less by accident, building fire engines.

By the time I got there on my second assignment as a graduate trainee, the company had been sold to George Angus, and Angus to Dunlop, then a large conglomerate.* I am hazy about it but I think HCB had been, at least mostly, Bill's baby, and he still had some sort of presence. Still running when I was there, and possibly still under George's ownership was Southern Automatics Co Ltd or SACOL. This had a well equipped machine shop which I never saw. I can't remember, if I ever really knew, what it produced, though hydraulics came into it. I do remember that an HCB engineer was assigned for a while to work in their drawing office to produce a power take-off so that we could put an Angus 250 gallon/min pump on the new V8 Landrover. The ratio of the silent chain PTO was based on performance matching curves I had drawn. The chief engineer at HCB was a direct descendant of Brunel.   


*(I was one of a graduate intake of about 120, including about a dozen mech eng. Some may remember the TV ad which showed people before and after the removal from the scene of everything made by Dunlop. In a tennis match there was left some grass, an umpire and two players in their underwear. A completely kitted out fire engine crew with their HCB-Angus engine, portable pump, hoses, nozzles, helmets, jackets, foam concentrate, extinguishers, etc. were left with little more.)     

[GWRdriver]

[snip] As far as I know Harry I've seen no detail yet that there's any difference between how the lathes are set up or with what options for the colors those Super 7's are painted.

I wouldn't have imagined so either, but because over the years changes have occurred so often (ie, "value engineering") in products I've been familiar with and use, it wouldn't be a stretch to suspect the change in color might indicate a shift in some way that affected quality, even if only in small details.

I found my serial number . . . SK125598, right where the manual said it was.  The problem is I misinterpreted the tiny ser# location schematic in the manual and looked everywhere but THERE!  According to the serial number listings on Lathes.co.uk it was made in 1975 or 76 and made it over to this side in 1977.  I have all the previous owners paperwork EXCEPT the original bill of sale.

I prefer the grey also (although if it hadn't been grey I'd have still been happy to have it), probably because when I entered the hobby machine tools anywhere within the reach of the amateur were painted some shade of grey, IMHO a fitting color for machine tools.

I'll get my coat and show myself out.
Harry   

[Charles Lamont]

Harry, your machine would have power cross-feed? Changes were made quite often. My machine, SK113448D, bought 1973, had gone away from guiding the saddle on the front shear to spanning the whole bed, and power cross-feed was introduced soon after mine. I don't think there were any significant changes with the change of colour. Though I think putting the tailstock barrel lock on top instead of behind was somewhere around that time, as well as changing to a fully machined top-slide.

[Chipswitheverything]

Interested in the information that is being brought together by this discussion.  Incidentally, I wonder if our original poster OAO, could give us a name?, actual or assumed!, to be able to seem a bit more friendly in addressing him ( or her..) ?!
 I'll add a few other comments later, but just to mention now that a local friend of mine has a brand new and never used whatsoever, green Myford Super 7 B, which had been bought new, with accessories, somewhen in the early era of the change to green. It seemed to spend quite a few years sat in the then buyers living room, and then my friend bought the whole ensemble, and has had it for 20 odd years still  ( until very recently ) covered with the original grease! It has still never been plugged in..   When I have looked at it, I can't say that I have noticed any difference other than colour from my grey, 1976 power c/feed Super 7 B. ( Indeed, my friend, when he sees my Myford which has seen battle for all these years, always says that he thinks the grey , with a trace of oily weathering, looks so much more machine like than the pristine green of his.  I do offer him some swarf to distribute around his lathe...!  So far declined...  Dave

[Chipswitheverything]

To add a little to this thread, for interested parties...     OAO, yes, I visited GHT's workshop and large, grange style house, in it's own grounds,  a few times most years between about 1966 and on up to the 'eighties.  My father knew GHT though a connection with a local camera club in the '60's, my father being the secretary and GHT the President.  George had a dedicated darkroom and photographic facility in the top area of the house, and of course used his skill and interest in this to personally process the high quality photos that were shown in his ME articles and books.

 I was just a young teenager when I first saw the workshop, and I remember my father coming home in the first instance, before I went with him, and telling of the wonders that he had been shown, having originally gone to Milton Grange on photographic business.  ( Incidentally, in a seperate workshop across the garden, not linked to the house as the m/eng. shop was, GHT had a full woodworking workshop, large in size, with Myford woodworking equipment included in it...)

  I was interested in model making in the usual way that youngsters were ( back then! ) and so I was introduced to the workshop, fascinating, albeit a bit out of my experience! Not long after this, an ML7 lathe that had been used for training at HCB/Angus in Totton, as Charles has explained, was surplus to the works, and sold to me , or rather to my father, for £20.  It had some chucks and a few basic things, and was on a well built cabinet , not Myford, which I still use for my present Super 7.   So, I had a lathe at about 14 !, but not much workshop backup, nor skill of course.
I had that lathe until 1976, sold it on to a violin maker...   As I got to my later teens, I was able to absorb more information imparted on the visits to Milton Grange, and by then GHT was fairly active in beginning the series of workshop equipment articles, and I was able to see the tools themselves, inspiring!, and have the written information to peruse. Subsequently, like so many other enthusiasts,  I made many of his tool designs, as I have mentioned in other postings.

  I can't add much to what Charles has said about GHT's professional life, he was retired when I used to visit in the later period, and his interest lay with the model engineering. I did have a tour of the Totton HCB Angus works, not with George, in c. 1977, a large busy premises machining pumps for fire engines.
 Certainly, as a graduate engineer, and an ambitious and very hard working one, GHT's concerns were for most of his life at a senior management level and not at shop floor level, though he was perhaps unusual to have nurtured such an intense interest in the practicalities of machining.  Rather than the Golf Club or what have you! He hated small talk and party-going, loved to discuss the model engineering and the articles being written. The Model Engineer magazine was then the focus of most of the information circulating.  He was, in circumstances when I knew him, a wealthy man living, with his wife, in a very fine house. 

Another long standing earlier interest of GHT was antiquarian horology.  He was able, as a young man around Clerkenwell in London, during the depression years, to buy very interesting watch movements , many early or mid eighteenth century, and later complex movements, that were, preposterously, discarded from watches, gold ones especially, when the watch cases were smashed up for gold scrap. Sacriledge, and would never happen now.  The movements were tossed in a bucket and sold for two shillings and sixpence each  ( 12 1/2 pence..) GHT bought such as he could, and examined and sometimes repaired them, fascinated by their technical features.
  To this end, somewhat later on, George designed, and had made ( probably at HCB ) a rather special watch making workshop which could be shut away from dust and tampering behind oak cupboard doors.
 In the 1970's my father, who had various technical interests, became interested and involved with horology.  GHT had by then moved on to absorbtion in the model engineering, and my father bought the watchmaking workshop and its complete Lorch lathe outfit and much other tooling related to the craft. Also some older watch movements. This is the cabinet in the photos ( not very good, I had to just copy some old prints.)  My father used this for 20 years or so : it was eventually sold on to an antiquarian horologist in the west country.

I have the Lorch lathe in its box. This lathe was ordered from Germany by GHT in the summer of 1939!!  He never expected to see it, not sure whether it had been paid for, but just about when the war broke out, the lathe was delivered to him!

I'll leave it there!   Dave

[Roger B]

Fascinating history  and having been born and bought up in Southampton some familiar names