Brown and Sharpe No. 0 Screw Machine

[FamilyTradition]

So I was browsing through Craigslist last week feeling out prices for machines, and I come across a listing for a "Brown and Sharpe Turret Lathe - $200" The story is, the owner's grandfather bought a machine shop in Brooklyn, NY about a hundred years ago, and for some reason, brought the machine up to Vermont, where it sat in a barn until some crazy SOB decided to go up there and pick it up.

That crazy SOB would be me. I couldn't pass up such a good deal, and I figured I didn't have enough junk sitting around the house already, so I arranged a time to pick it up, and made my way up to Plymouth, VT on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

Of course everything I do has to be an interesting adventure, and this beautiful Saturday afternoon was also HOT. So I had to stop just before the exit in Westminster to let my truck cool down. She wasn't liking the constant uphill, and I probably need to do the water pump or radiator soon. I was able to get off the highway and into the town of Plymouth without overheating, but this is just where the fun begins.

For some godforsaken reason, this guy that bought the Brown and Sharpe No. 0 a hundred years ago, also lived in the middle of nowhere, and thought "Yeah, let's get the horse and buggy and haul this chunk of metal up the side of a mountain - great idea!". So I ventured down a few one lane dirt roads, got lost, GPS says there should be a road here, but it's just a precipitous drop down the valley into a river.



This picture wasn't even of the worst one, and doesn't do much justice to how tight my old boat was going down these roads (mind you, I don't have 4WD either, so I get real nervous on some of these VT backroads - I am just happy it is not mud season). A few near head-on collisions later (ain't it funny how much traffic there is in the middle of nowhere?), I make it up to the farm.

We make pleasantries and introductions, exchange money, and with the help of the previous owner's friends, we get it up into the bed of my truck (we took the tailstock off the machine and the machine off the base to do this and re-assembled for transport). I brought the engine crane with me just in case, so now it is just in the way along with bricks, boards, and the muffler, which fell off last week. Thankfully, I was smart enough to buy some brand new straps on the way up, so I got it all strapped in and ready to go fly South (that is, back home to Greenfield, Mass).



I took the state highways and US 5 back down without much incident, got a bite to eat in Brattleboro, and made it home. I had put in some OT this week so I was now tasked with doing all the clean-up around the homestead that I meant to do during the week.

The main obstacle then, was a Mercedes OM617 I pulled out of a parts car over the winter. It runs, but right now it's sort of a giant paperweight I am keeping around for parts (did I mention I liked to collect junk?). It was taking up most of the shed where this machine was destined to go. I got some organizing done, but those OM617's are heavy, even with the transmission disconnected.

Dad's tractor is over at my house, and the poor thing barely could make it budge. The engine crane was trapped in the back of my truck behind the machine. I was going to need it anyhow to assist removal from the bed of my truck - everyone was out on the boat this weekend, go figure. What the hell am I doing on a beautiful weekend in July moving cast iron around?



Anyhow, I was at least back at home in Greenfield. I called it a night at about 9PM after doing other preparations and attempting to move the gosh darned diesel engine. I did cover the old girl up to keep the dew off (I already brought the tailstock into the shed - at least one piece was inside!).

Sunday came with another unsuccessful attempt to pull that godforsaken engine out of the shed, using tractor hydraulic power, and I gave up for a few hours. I focused my energy on at least getting the machine down on ground level. The bucket came in handy here. Added some padding so there was no metal-on-metal, and used the engine hoist to get it into the bucket.



I didn't take too many pictures of getting the machine on the ground, as I am not any sort of expert at hoisting and rigging, and I am sure some would take offense to my methods. All I will say, is that I got the machine out of my truck without killing myself, damaging property, or (most importantly) hurting the machine.

I was finally able to get my nemesis, the OM617 diesel engine, moved. Of course, I did have to buy a chain hoist to help with that, but I am now the proud owner of a 5-ton chain hoist! It will come in handy on future projects.

Here's a few photos once I got the old girl in the shed and put (mostly) back together.







Here's the patent date when it was still strapped into the truck:



And some sort of bushing? spacer? that fell out when we loaded it into the truck. I have yet to figure out where it goes, and I have not ventured too far into the inner workings of the machine as of yet, as everything looks to be in place and (mostly) functional.



My plan is to do some minor clean up and then set up a few of the other machines I've collected over the years and run a shaft and pulleys. This lathe doesn't appear to have had much use, and with a little bit of clean up and some investment in tooling, I'm sure she will be making chips again.

Worst case scenario, it will sit in my shed for another hundred years, and my grandkids will sell it to a sucker with a pickup truck and $200 burning a hole in his pocket.

 

[neilho]

Yeah, saw that machine on CL too. I have some chunks of turrets that will fit if you need parts - free to you, right off a VT State route...

What could be cooler than wrassling cast iron on a beautiful VT summer weekend?

 

[michiganbuck]

Wow, a cool machine.
You could knock out a million 1/4-20 hex nuts at about 12 seconds each.

 

[DDoug]

Why didn't you just hook straps over the bucket and lift the whole machine off safely ?

 

[FamilyTradition]

Why didn't you just hook straps over the bucket and lift the whole machine off safely ?

I honestly don't know. Usually when I move machines I am in the mindset of breaking them down to a reasonable degree to move them, as I have some machines that are small enough for me to move by hand.

I was also thinking I'd be able to work up the muscle to move the base without assistance, but that was a lofty goal.

Hindsight is always 20/20, I suppose.

 

[FamilyTradition]

Yeah, saw that machine on CL too. I have some chunks of turrets that will fit if you need parts - free to you, right off a VT State route...

What could be cooler than wrassling cast iron on a beautiful VT summer weekend?

I appreciate the offer. I would like to plan a trip up to the American Precision Museum in Windsor sometime this summer. I'll be in touch if I do that and certainly swing by!

 

[DDoug]

I honestly don't know. Usually when I move machines I am in the mindset of breaking them down to a reasonable degree to move them, as I have some machines that are small enough for me to move by hand.

I was also thinking I'd be able to work up the muscle to move the base without assistance, but that was a lofty goal.

Hindsight is always 20/20, I suppose.

Weld some grab hooks on the top of the bucket, I've done a few for friends, so you don't nick the cylinder chrome whilst slinging a chain around things to get a hold onto.

 

[FamilyTradition]

Weld some grab hooks on the top of the bucket, I've done a few for friends, so you don't nick the cylinder chrome whilst slinging a chain around things to get a hold onto.

It's hard to see in the picture, but there are two hooks bolted to the top side of the bucket. I will put them to good use when I get my South Bend out of my parents' basement.

That is a project for another week, I'm tuckered out from this one for sure!

 

[michiganbuck]

The chip pan and legs are easily worth $200, you got the machine for free.

 

[FamilyTradition]

The chip pan and legs are easily worth $200, you git the machine for free.

I suppose that's one of the reasons I wanted to buy it - I couldn't stand the thought of the base getting turned into a coffee table or something of the sort, and the machine going into the scrap.

 

[reggie_obe]

I honestly don't know. Usually when I move machines I am in the mindset of breaking them down to a reasonable degree to move them, as I have some machines that are small enough for me to move by hand.

I was also thinking I'd be able to work up the muscle to move the base without assistance, but that was a lofty goal.

Hindsight is always 20/20, I suppose.

Better to buy or build better lifting equipment like a 2T gantry crane before a herniated disc tells you to do so.

 

[jim rozen]

I suspect that machine probably made a few dollars in its former life.

 

[FamilyTradition]

I suspect that machine probably made a few dollars in its former life.

Perhaps, but this machine is remarkably clean. I haven't seen any chips in the nooks and crannies. Nothing under the tailstock, in between or under the ways, and the chip pan and coolant reservoir are spotless. Plenty of barn dust on it, but no evidence of machining.

Either the guy that bought it was meticulous in cleaning it when he brought it to Vermont, or the machine has just never made chips. There's an 1/8 collet in the spindle, I have not tried taking it out, I may find evidence of use there.

Wild guess, but maybe it was used for something like wire forming? There's a trapezoidal block clamped on top of some large washers in the cross-slide, where I would expect the cutoff tool to be.

Edit: Could be that it was restored at one point and not used much after that. Does anyone know if yellow was an OEM color for these machines?

 

[nihilistic]

I used to work on B&S automatics and we had an older model #00 that was retrofitted from the overhead belt drive, so approximately the same generation or near enough to your machine and it was a dark green enamel. The next newer gens (~1930s) adopted the more common battleship gray.

 

[Doozer]

Random take-away from your thread...
Many years ago,
my dad's plumber friend gave me some lathe legs
that he found in a basement that he was cleaning
out. He gave them to me because he know I was
"in to" machines. I could never identify them as
of yet, but now I see they are an exact match for
the legs you have on your B&S turret lathe.
Even stranger (and probably meaningless), my legs
are also mustard yellow. So maybe I have B&S legs.
Somewhere along the way I picked up a set of that
I believe to be workbench legs, cast by Brown and
Sharpe. I think they were the set with the step out
for the radiator pipes.

--Doozer

 

[Joe Michaels]

About 55 years ago, when I was a teenager, I worked in a machine shop for a summer and some part time during the school year. One of the first jobs they put me on was production runs on a B & S number 0 'hand screw machine'. This was a much more modern version of your B & S number 0. The machine I was on had an enclosed base, underneath motor drive, and (I believe) a 'silent chain' drive to the headstock spindle. It also had a set of cam-actuated fingers to feed the stock thru the headstock spindle, and a lever operated clutch. There was a palm button which, when smacked with the end of your fist, would cause the collet in the headstock spindle to open and the stock to be advanced thru the spindle (to hit a stop on one station of the turret), then it drew the collet closed. Once you got the hang of the Number ), you never stopped the spindle between turning out each part.

Those first runs of parts that I made were machined from gray PVC round bar stock, and were bushings and stepped washers for a newspaper printing line's machinery. Whatever the bushings and washers were used for must have consumed them like M & M candy, as I had to make literally thousands of the bushings and washers. I thought I was hot stuff when I worked with an elderly German immigrant to setup the Number 0, but once I got to running the actual parts, I discovered that time either stood still or was capable of going backwards. We had wooden 'duck boards' on the floor (predating cushioned matting), and the coolant used was a milky white soluble oil. In short order, I was wet with a combination of sweat and soluble oil.The floor under the duck boards was wet with soluble oil. Gray PVC chips corkscrewed off and I would stop to throw them into an oil drum. After I had what seemed a heap of parts made, I would put them in what looked like a restaurant deep frier basket, and wash them with hot water and detergent. I'd give the basket a shake and then dump the parts onto a scale pan. We had a weight for something like 100 pieces, so it was easy enough to get the quantity of parts made by using that known weight against what the scale showed. Seemed like I'd never get to the required quantity. To add to the total tedium of it, I had to manually deburr the parts with a three-corner scraper. We are talking numbers like 5000 of each part. I got a rhythm going on the Number 0, and was banging out the PVC parts, but falling down in the deburring department.

The Number 0 seemed to have a kind of song to it, probably from the silent chain in the headstock and the gear pump for the coolant. Combined with the other sounds of that shop, the flapping of leather belting and the whir of lineshaft pulleys fanning the air, it made a nice music. I found myself kind of moving with it, once I stopped thinking about the time and letting the job become boredom. Maybe it was an early experience with 'muscle memory' . The jobs required using the handlever to feed tool bits and a cutoff tool, and to work the turret thru a few stations to drill down the center of the stock and do a couple of other operations.

When I got moved onto some other work, I can't say I missed the B & S number 0 hand screw machine. I would clean myself up at day's end, change into 'street clothes', and reek of soluble cutting oil. I'd walk a good piece to the subway station and then ride in un-airconditioned NYC subways for over an hour to get home to my parents' house in Brooklyn. Packed subway cars, no A/C, in the summer and me reeking of soluble oil. One time, there was an empty 5 gallon steel can that had held some kind of oil, with the "Gulf" oil logo on it, blue and white paint. A handy can, and the foreman said I could take it home. I used it as a seat on the subway on the ride home, lugging it thru a transfer of subway lines at 42nd street/Times Square, then sitting on that oil can for the ride out to Brooklyn. I remember my fingers being wrinkled and seemingly getting quite soft from that soluble oil, nicked from the three corner scraper, legs tired from standing all day, and the barrels of PVC chips (as well as the smell of PVC being machined).

You have an ancient version of the B & S number 0. Brown & Sharpe called that machine a 'hand screw machine". I suppose if you gather some tooling for it and line up some production run of parts, you can enjoy having it around. I moved up in that old machine shop, so I suppose the B &S hand screw machine was as good a starting point as any for a kid. I think the old German immigrant machinists had their wisdom: put a seemingly eager kid claiming to know something of machine work on a hand screw machine and make him deburr about 10,000 small parts. If he sticks around and does good with it, we'll teach him the trade..." Fifty five plus years later, into 'retirement' (a figure of speech), I am still loving machine work and enjoy passing along what I can to younger people. The flat belts still sing their songs to me, and I realize I am now one of the oldtimers, about where the guys who put me on that B & S number 0 were when I was a kid just starting to learn machine work. Your B & S number 0 is not about to tell you its life story, but could have been in some machine shop in a loft building in Williamsburgh, Bushwick, Ridgewood, or the Greenpoint areas of Brooklyn. It was in its prime during WWI, obsolete by WWII. It certainly cranked out loads of production run parts for any number of industries that used to be in Brooklyn. Hardly any machine shops or real manufacturing industries left in the 5 boroughs of NYC, and the industrial neighborhoods where your B & S number 0 could have been setup and run are now trendy 'loft housing', with 'industrial' furniture made from old machine tool legs and bases being about the only vestige of the industrial past the areas once had. Belt the old screw machine up and find some production run of parts. You are in Vermont, so maybe run some brass barstock and make candlestick parts, sell 'em as local crafts with the local craft candlemakers that seem to inhabit parts of Vermont.

 

[FamilyTradition]

Joe, thank you for the wonderful story about your experience on these machines! I am excited to continue the tradition of the "Hand Screw Machine" - and I do know my shoulders are going to ache for a bit - the last shop I worked at, one of the many things I did was secondary ops/ back chamfering of bushings with manual lathes. Often times had rags wrapped around the collet closer lever and tailstock handle so I wouldn't go down to the bone on my hands. The good operators would chamfer 2000-3000 parts a day.

I plan on getting it set up to run simple parts for extra-cirricular fun. It appears to use the same type of tooling as later Brown and Sharpe automatics (5/8" shank), and collets are still widely available (#10 collets). I have some tooling on the way already for it.

I have been meaning to ask the previous owner if he knew any details about the shop it came from, it would be fun to know more about the history of this machine, prior to sitting for a century.

The shop I currently work at actually has one with the chain drive, like you ran. I was wondering what the Mobius-strip looking contraption behind the headstock was - probably the cam feed attachment you mentioned. It is sitting in the junk pile right now. It doesn't have a tailstock, either, unfortunately. Looks like it was set up to do some secondary operation or rework of some sort. I'd like to catch the boss on a day when he's in a good mood, and offer to assist in "disposal". I saved a Schaublin lathe from my last job in a similar manner - they had 2 machines destined for the scrap pile and I was allowed to borrow some forklift time to load one into the back of my dad's truck. Helped them get a machine out of the way, helped me collect some more junk, and saved another piece of history. Now waiting for me to get my act together and get it set up!

And I am not in Vermont, but the machine was. I am just south of the border in Massachusetts. Although I wouldn't mind if we were part of Southern VT, to be honest

 

[pan60]

i have in the back of my mind wanted one of those.

 

[jim rozen]

I know that rancid chunky soluble oil. I accidentally got a shampoo dose one time. Nasty.

 

[john.k]

I once got a nasty kind of pneumonia from breathing the coolant fog generated by internal grinding ......I should have known the coolant was off,by the horrible sores I got allover my hands from just accidental contact,not swimming in the stuff......but you dont want to be replacing coolant every five minutes..