For several years now, I have been the happy owner of a lovely old lathe. It's a Barnes 4½, treadle powered, made in Illinois at least a century ago.
Although I am very happy with the lathe, which came with almost all the bits I needed, it has always lacked a steady rest. Although I have not often needed one, there has been the occasional project where I was trying to turn something relatively long and thin, which would have been easier if the work could be supported along its length. Barnes did make a rest which they supplied with the lathe or could be bought as an extra, but as you can imagine, accessories like this are a bit rare these days, especially on this side of the Atlantic.
Imagine how nice it was then, to open a present from my wife on Christmas day and find this little beauty nestling inside!
I think she might have had some help with her eBay searches, as it's exactly what I wanted, even though the seller didn't know what lathe it was for!
Today I was able to give it a bit of TLC and get it ready for use. It was fairly clean but neglected, with some old dirt clogging up the threads on the adjuster bolts and some very minor surface rust spots. Here it is on my decorative bench protector cloth.
To remove the rather stiff screws, I thought this old Footprint spanner was the ideal choice.
The design was registered in 1889, but this one must be later than 1918 as it has an Air Ministry crown
Does anybody know when they stopped using that mark?
This was the smallest of seven sizes offered, and was described in the T.R. Ellin catalogue as being suitable "to carry in the waistcoat pocket" so is ideal for my purposes.
The screws were a little bit bent
but responded to gentle tapping with a soft hammer. I also cleaned up the threads a little with a tap and die. I gave the main casting a gentle brushing with a brass wire brush, then wiped over some reviver mixture, to clean off the rest of the dirt and leave a thin coat of linseed oil, to match the rest of the lathe.
And so, here it is, carefully posed in what is not a real action shot just yet, but to show how it fits on and might be used.