Happy daze indeed. As a callow youth of about 21, I watched fascinated as a low loader delivered a strange looking machine to the loading dock of our former family business. It was a Drummond Maxicut 3A gear shaper, but my peace of mind was shattered when I was told to get to know how to use it and make the tooling. Once I got used to it, I really liked it but it helped to have a good quality steel that cut nicely and especially accurately made components.
We ended up with a couple of 2A machines also but apart from the gears I made for the Silks, we only made for ourselves, and, of course my 4 speed Scott boxes. I still have the cutters in a box but no room for a machine and perhaps no time to use it if I had one, but I know folks who will cut gears for me when I need them. I was so lucky to have had the opportunity to work so many machines and be central to production planning, so that making things is not really a challenge. For those who have spent time with machine tools, I was fascinated (again) by the picture of Scotts cylinder barrel machine for skirt end ops. A hefty turret lathe but with an extra cross slide under the turret so that when the blind head form tool was at depth, they could feed sideways to undercut the main bore. I would like to make barrels at a price that was reasonable, but have not cracked that one yet! Cheers Roger
