DSG lathe
 

Hi All,

I'm after a DSG lathe, type 17 or similar really. Have looked at Colchesters an equivalent size and they're just not quite man enough for the sort of work traction and railway engines require!

Let me know if you know of anything!

Thanks,
George

Have you looked on eBay? I have not looked now, but there have been some reasonable looking DSG's listed over the past few months.

I took about a year of looking for a 1709 x 60 before I finally found a really good example at a sensible price. I saw some real rough machines which didn't match the sales descriptions.

Matrix clutch parts are ludicrously expensive (!!!!!) so make sure you can check the lathe under power.

Cheers Carl.

I thought it was you at George Mudge’s today - didn’t think you’d remember me so I kept to myself lol



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No idea what their prices are like but www.electromotion.co.uk usually have a selection of DSG lathes in.

I was not impressed with this company. I made an appointment to view an ex-Royal Navy DSG 1910T which they had sent me photos of. It was priced at £5500 but was in excellent condition. When I got there, the machine I was shown was not the same lathe - evidenced by different machine serial numbers and a minor difference that the pictures showed a 60" version whereas the one they showed me had a 40" bed. Also, the price had been increased to £7,000 from the night before when I had telephoned to confirm my appointment.

The salesman was extremely rude and argued it was the same lathe despite the different serial numbers!! He was completely unsympathetic that he had cost me a wasted day and 350 miles.

I have heard near identical stories from two other potential buyers in recent years.

Cheers Carl.

Lesser known makes go for much less money, for example this Mitchell lathe is for sale for £1000 "buy it now" on Ebay.

Ebay

Recently I saw a nice well equipped old Lang lathe left unsold at £300 on Ebay.

Bargains are out there look, out for poorly described, dirty, poor photo, ETC.

And steer clear of dealers especially big ones like the above mentioned Electromotion.


P.S. good guidance can be had here. http://www.lathes.co.uk/page21.html

yes to the above our giant mitchell is a great tool, probably between the wars but can be adjusted for wear and 3/400£ biggest issue was shifing it down country and sorting some tooling as its far far bigger than anything else we had, having a 2 1/2 inch up the spout. and mt 4 in the tail stock. theres a denham at telford and a slightly younger mitchell like ours for a grand on atm.

DSG LATHE
 

Having worked for Dean, Smith& Grace for a good few years , I have to say you`ll not find a better machine ! And if one is lucky, a decent machine can still be found at sensible money. You have to bear in mind that the manual DSGs have not made since the late `70s - early 80s so anything that one is likely to find will be 45 + years old .

During my time we did re-build quite a number of older machines - and some of those will be 20 + years old now . I should say that a rebuilt DSG by DSG was NOT a steam- clean, quick coat of cheap paint and a polish of the handwheels job, but a complete strip down , every part examined , bed-ways and slides reground , the machine reassembled to original alignments and tolerances and finally a proper `fill and rub down` paint job in quality machinery paint. The result was indistinguishable from a new machine - but of course expensive. And less and less companies were prepared to pay for this, unless it was one of the larger / long bed type machines.


Because a DSG was a lot more expensive when new , they tended to be sold into the larger, well established engineering concerns and often had `pride of place` in the shop . I came across many instances where the DSG was a `one operator` machine and no-one else used it in his absence - the machine being treated and looked after as his own personal property,
something you probably won`t find today. These machines do come up for sale from time to time as the original operator retires and then it becomes another old machine.

Bottom line is - a DSG is a quality machine - very user friendly and nice to use and well worth any TLC you give it . One small point - if it is a gap- bed machine you are considering - not all are - make sure the removable gap piece is fitted , or at least with the machine. Gap- pieces get taken out put under the bench and forgotten and the machine later sold on without the gap- piece . Believe me - very, very expensive and time consuming to fit a new one .

Colchesters are OK and are very plentiful in the marketplace, particularly the Triumph model , but because they were cheap (ish ) when new , they were the workhorses in many small shops, and had a full and hard life and then replaced for a new one. So, if a Colchester is your choice, look very carefully, as any worn machine with noisy headstock gearing can be very expensive to put right .

The availability of spare parts is another consideration - parts for Colchesters shouldn`t be a problem as there are so many in the field . DSG used to be able to supply parts for any machine - and some very old machine too . In some instances to be helpful, they would give the customer the drawing and suggest he makes his own. Whether spares are still available as before I don`t know, but the company has changed hands twice in recent years, so things might be different now.

Mitchell lathes were quite nice, `no frills`, practicable machines with a useful capacity and also at one time near neighbours of Dean, Smith& Grace in Keighley. The company became part of the B. Elliott Machine Tool Group and moved from Keighley many years ago. Mitchell lathes were popular machines with their good capacity in works maintenance shops. Nowadays when many companies out source their maintenance requirements and get rid of the in house maintenance shops , these machine turn up not having done a lot of work and are a good buy. Incidentally , the former chief designer of the later Mitchell lathes did some free lance design work on a project I was involved with . He came with a large roll of lathe drawings with the idea of producing a slightly re- vamped Mitchell lathe that Elliotts had discontinued.

There are a lot of continental machines about of varying quality and provenance, and probably only sold here in small numbers. It can be a problem to find any service information or even spare parts for these machines. The possible exception is the range of Czech machine tools sold in the UK under the TOS banner by the 600 Group. TOS machines are well built , rugged machine and perform well and are fairly plentiful. The Czechs are good engineers and their machine tools are no exception. There could be some good buys here.

Italian machine tools look nice and are fairly rare here, but my experience with the manufacturers of the few Italian machine I have used has been an unhappy experience - any requests for service information or spare parts has been met with a total blank / or nothing. It seems they have a policy no assistance once a machine is more than about 5 years old - or less. On that basis, I would give any Italian machine a wide berth.

MARK RIGG

I have a Mitchell I’ve known it since new , when I was 15 and starting out on a engineering apprenticeship the first job I was given was to clean it as Mitchell had just installed it for many many years I was the only person allowed to use it some 35 years later the factory closed and I was ask did I wish to purchase it for £400-00 which I did then I had to remove it I’m 72 and enjoy using it

Second that about e.m. Most unhelpful-I for one won't be going there again!