The Home Machinist!

New to the forum and thought I'd post pics of my new (to me) B&S 1 1/2 milling machine.

I know the 1 1/2's are old and hard to find, but hopefully someone here will have some knowledge.

Along with it, and not in the picture, I received a motor (Craftsman) and gearbox (Turner Uni-Drive). I got to see the machine in action and everything worked before we loaded it up. Everything feels tight too. Not much slop at all. The guys were showing me the functions pretty quickly and I didnt' take notes so if anyone here has one and can refresh my memory as to what all the knobs/button are for, I would appreciate it. Some are obvious, but others not so much.




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Welcome,

There is also a Yahoo Brown and Sharpe forum so if you do not find it here, you might find it there!

Congrats and welcome The 1 1/2 size is sorta special. Universal table and appears in good condition. Some little things which may appear is the offset of the OA arbor support is cocked. The arbor isn't in it so it is just cocked. It does appear to have some lube system or bearing adjust off to the side. The knee screw shows a collar which isn't just a collar rising out of the base post. It's part of a compound screw type thing for table to lower all the way without the screw hitting the floor. You might want to check its operation before mounting. My 1 1/2 still required a hole drilled thru concrete a few inches so the screw would pass. Then again these are pretty old now. I hope you got a dividing head or maybe some gears in the trunk compartment. Either way it's cool.

Bro spro, I'm a little unclear on what you mean here, can you 'splain to the ignorant (me)?



ecdez, some of these old treasures were built for shorter machinists back then, maybe you'd want to mount the machine up on some form of subframe (if you're tallish that is) that might give you the clearance you need for full table travel. I've mounted my mill and my 16x60 lathe on channel iron on edge, I find it a more comfortable work height and with a pallet truck you can move the machines real easy if a reorganization of the shop ever comes up.
Keep us informed of your progress.

He was commenting that the arbor support is tilted, but the arbor support and spindle are one above the other, so it appears that the arbor support isn't attached to the end of the arbor or there is something amiss.

Nice looking piece of old iron.

Did you get any tooling with it?

Do you know what the spindle taper is? That's the first thing I would look at to see what tooling it needs.

Steve

It is cocked, but it has some type of dead center in it that they were using. Seems to work fine.









I'm 6' 2" so this my be a good idea. I really like the pallet jack idea. I need to track one of them down.







I got some cutters and some additional tooling as well. I'll post some pics of that stuff later.

It has the cursed B&S #10 taper. There is still some new stuff available, but it is very limited.

Bet you're wondering how I knew

I picked up a used one for my shop/inventory move here from Ontario. $150.00 I was gonna sell it once the move was done but it's so handy and I have the room so it's found many other uses.
There not much good for moving stuff down stairs but a lot faster than moving stuff upstairs .

My suggestion is to get a shop that makes things like high-precision spindles to make you an adaptor to a more common size. That way you buy one adapter and the rest of the tooling is cheap.

Not sure what fits inside B&S 10, but you might get an MNTB or CAT to fit in there, or maybe MT3 or R8.

I had a 4PN to 2MT adapter made for my Pratt & Whitney.

I once saw an R8 to Moore adapter someone made by a toolmaker. He was able to pick up used Moore tooling cheap and put it in his Bridgeport.

I was at a flea market last week and picked up B&S9 to MT2 and MT3 adapters. My Brainard has a proprietary taper, but it came with a B&S9 adapter, so as long as errors don't stack up, I can use standard tooling.

The overarm looks to be dual use - one side for a center to go into arbors with a center, and the large hole for arbors with a bearing.

Steve

Heres a picture of the tooling that came with it. They said they used it in this machine but I can not confirm yet if it has the correct taper. Maybe they were blowing smoke, maybe not.


The one on the left is labeled B&S #154, the two in the middle are B&S #603A and the one on the right is unlabeled. The one end is chewed up pretty goo so I don't know how much good it would have been anyway. Anyone know how to decode these numbers?





Got some cutters too. Not many, but enough to get me started.




Check out this crazy thread size. Not sure if I measured it correctly, but it appears to be 2 1/2" x 4. They said the put a 3-jaw chuck from their South Bend lathe on there once for some job, but again, no way to confirm it.

The one on the left looks like it may be a collet holder? The 2 in the middle are shell mills and are very nice to have and that size costs a pretty penny along with a whole bunch of ugly dollars. The one on the right looks like it might be for a drill chuck? I would need to see a picture from the top end of the tool on the left and the one on the right to be sure. I am wondering about the tang on the 3 to the right? Is the tang tapped for a draw bar? The numbers are most likely catalog numbers and may not mean much to anyone?



Those are some nice cutters and would cost you quite a bit to replace them. They should work well for you. Also some arbor spacers I see.



That is what the thread is for to mount either a 3 jaw or 4 jaw chuck. Some even mount a face plate as well. You can swing some pretty large parts this way. I know I have done it. You have more tooling than I thought you would get. You are off to a nice start with this.

Do you know if you have roller bearings on the spindle or bronze bushings? From the photo it looks like it may be bronze bushing spindle, but I can't really tell?

I ran an old number 4 B&S with bronze spindle bearings and it was no fun. The company didn't want to fix it and you really had to fool around to hold .0005 on a bore because the bearings were worn.

Richard W.

I just like these universals and the Brown & Sharpe is the main example. These 1, 1 1/2, 2 machines were equipped with a package once. The horiz spindle could take a chuck for turning but perhaps mor for trueing the chuck. The machines were rigged up for driving higher speed grinding attachments and fixtures which went all over if you went to get there. The aprox 2 1/2 of thread on the spindle isn't excactly boring torque. There was a collar to protect those nose threads. They were too delicate to retract a stuck taper. I have to say my 1 1/2 is a different brand but they were like bros in the long view. The chuck which fit the main spindle also fit the index head. The index head was driven by a gear setup so the spiral gearing or worms could be done by the indexible table.
It was much like a package deal and few of these remain intact. Things like the early vertical heads disappeared and the index heads went away to newer machines.

I'm following an earlier note about the OA in that it was cocked. It was for both type arbors as was noted here. I hadn't see that before as others here did. FWIW I have a Hendey Norton 1 1/2 of aprox that age. The reason I mention the knee going all the way down and screw passing thru the floor is because of the verticle heads then. They were driven by the main spindle and affixt to the OA. With verticle spindle of #10 and threaded for a chuck, they were heavy. They could sweep L-R around the arbor axis. Locked, very stout, and very well made. They weighed about more than a motor driven vertical head>So they went away.> because they had to be clamped to the face of the mill> and the horiz arbor had to be in place to drive one> and supported by the OA.
AND they hung down much further hence the lowest setting of the knee.