Small Lathe Built in a Japanese Prison Camp

[Dutchman]

This nearly defies belief....

http://dutchman.rebooty.com/temp/Prison-Camp-Lathe.pdf

Since there's so many home machinists in this forum I figured it would be interesting to quite a few of you.

Dutch

[texassako]

I have the book that came from I think, quite an interesting piece of history.

[oldred]

That looks very interesting if it hadn't been in that danged PDF format, I HATE PDF files! As happens sometimes I had to restart my computer due to freeze up, the PDF format is nothing but a PITA.

Thanks for posting that anyway, I will google it and I bet there is some info available in a more user-friendly style document.

[theperfessor]

Wow, that is really neat. Good post.

[country gent]

At one time in this country if you wanted a lathe mill shaper planer grinder you made it in house. Then they slowly became available from venders. Your skills and accuracy determined the accuracy of your machinery. A lathe bedd would be cast Hand filed and scrapped tru, same with carriage and saddle. dovetails and gibs were hand fit filing and scrapped true. Gears were cut to fit by hand. A time when tru craftsmen were running tis country.

[izzyjoe]

Very interesting, it's amazes me what some people can do with very little, and while other have everything, and can't do nothing! Thank you for posting that Dutch, it's a very good read.

[bob208]

that story is in the machinest bed side reader. los of good ideas in all three books. you can get books with plans from old time books for different machine builds. i read about a guy that made a milling machine from a 4 cyl. engine block.

[waksupi]

Very cool.

And I agree, PDF files suck!

[10-x]

Thanks for posting.

[smokeywolf]

Truly amazing! Use your imagination and see yourself in that prison camp with camp personnel who hate and despise you from the deepest and darkest recesses of their souls. They will use any excuse or none at all to take your head off.
You are fabricating something from almost nothing; in secret, risking being discovered, often working in low light or near darkness, trying to make as little noise as possible and scared to death every minute. It's an amazing accomplishment.

I can remember complaining about not having insert tooling in one of the shops I worked in. In another shop, I had to do a lot of single-pointing. I complained that we should have a geometric die head. The boss said, "you're welcome to go out and buy one and bring it in". I got to where I could just about single-point a thread on a piece of stock in my sleep.
I was no different then than a lot of people. Never satisfied, always wanted the easy way out. Nearly thirty years later, I'm ashamed at how lazy and spoiled I was.

smokeywolf

[Surculus]

That looks very interesting if it hadn't been in that danged PDF format, I HATE PDF files! As happens sometimes I had to restart my computer due to freeze up, the PDF format is nothing but a PITA.

Stop using Adobe Acrobat & switch to Foxit Reader. Once you remove the Adobe bloatware[1], your problems w/ PDF will likely disappear.

[1] I had problems for several years w/ freezes, crashes, etc. before realizing that the root cause w/ the Adobe automatic updater doesn't place nice w/ anything, including Windows XP [under which it's supposed to run...]