MOWRER WW LATHE TOOLS: Carriage Stop For Watchmakers Lathe Cross Slide

I'm in the midst of a project making 4 double bearing pots for hanging shafts on a threading tool I've designed. This requires a lot of boring out of material in a very repetitive manner. I got tired by the second pot casing of endlessly counting out the revolutions on the cross slide longitudinal feed so as not to accidentally plunge the boring bar into the bottom of the pot and cause a big mess in the process.
My solution was to whip up a small carriage stop that I could adjust for both positive and negative X travel. The results are below

carriage stop for watchmakers lathe cross slide

Carriage stop for watchmakers lathe cross slide

The brass frame for the stop is dovetailed to fit snugly over the bed of the cross slide and clamps down tightly using an 8-32 stainless cap head bolt.

Dovetailed carriage stop in brass for watchmakers lathe

As you can see, the length of the traveling threaded rod comes to just behind the crank handle (whew) at full retraction.

Fully retracted carriage stop shaft fits behind hand crank

I've also relieved the far side of the frame so that I can also use it on the chuck side of the slide if I ever need to. This allows me to get reasonably close to the spinning chuck. Most of the time I'm sure I'll be using it on the off side.

Carriage stop mounted on near side of watchmakers lathe cross slide

Carriage stop mounted on near side and relieved close to chuck

I plan to design some small knurled stainless nuts rather than use the hardware store nickel plated variety presently on the shaft. They'll look better and spin left and right much fast as well and won't require a tool to tighten. I'll post that as soon as I'm done with them.
cheers, Kevin

IMPORTANT please read

Important Change Notice!

Hello friends and visitors. I am taking a temporary hiatus from offering the parts shown in this blog on shapeways. I have had many inquiries and a lot of effort has gone into preparing the parts for sale. Unfortunately, 3D printing of parts one at a time is not as cheap as mass market bulk castings.

There is not enough demand to have the parts bulk cast and doing so would also mean a change of material from the wonderful Bronze infused Stainless Steel.

The metal printed kits come in well under the cost of purchasing completed new parts from the likes of Levin and such but are significantly more expensive than the lower functionality antique items on Ebay.

I have found that the market is generally at the lower end of the spectrum.

I am presently reworking how I might be able to bring the costs down on the parts somewhat and will notify you through this posting when they are ready for kit purchase.

Thanks and cheers, Kevin

WELCOME

Hello Blog visitors and welcome to my blog about the adventures of creating high quality, new tools for the antique WW watchmakers lathe. Nearly a year ago I acquired an 8mm American Watch tool company lathe from a local antique store. It was not in the very best of shape but I am someone who loves to rescue machines of quality and bring them back into service. I am also an inventor and an artist and this beautiful little lathe captured my interest.

Once I'd managed to carefully bring it back to working condition, I decided I wanted to have certain functionalities for it to solve some of it's challenges in doing the kind of work I wanted to use it for. It worked so well for very small brass parts and removal of very small amounts but I wanted to do this kind of high accuracy work on some longer and more robust pieces of material.

What began as a project to make a superior steady rest has turned into many other tools adding various functions and abilities to the lathe.

The results are chronicled throughout this blog.

I hope you enjoy the process posted here.

Cheers and enjoy! Kevin Mowrer

MOWRER WW LATHE TOOLS

Carriage Stop For Watchmakers Lathe Cross Slide

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