In case you’ve been thinking about making some low whistles:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=25280&item=3880090776
Best wishes,
Jerry
Looks like the price includes shipping. Can’t beat that. Wish I had the time and the energy to get into whistle making. I’d grab it up.
Looks to be just right. But is it cnc?
Nice! but is it suitable for a high D?
So that’s what a lathe is? I’ve always wondered. I thought they were smaller things.
How do people fit those in their basements and craft rooms to make whistles? For that matter, how do they afford them without charging a million dollars per whistle?
That JessieK will sell anything!
I think you’d have to buy a crane too, so you could lift the tree inito the lathe.
And I thought my lathe was big! That’s an impressive bit of machinery. Just right for a
subsonic flute or whistle, don’t you think? 
–Chris
gosh…wonder what key this could make at its biggest??? 
)
berti
Geez , Jerry !! Isnt that thing a bit large for the mice , I mean apprentices to run ? 
Have a Great Day and Fun Whistling !!
That’s equipment that could be used to manufacture Whistles of Mass Destruction. 
Wow, that would be perfect for a subcontrabasswhistle in Low-Low-Low-D.
The alternative are australian red termites to bore it out and specially trained woodpeckers to make the toneholes.
I’m sure the Kramatorsk Mod.1683 would turn out a fine whistle but would said whistle play anything other than the “Volga Boatmen” song?
Wonder where you’d get cutters…and how you’d sharpen them.
Lathes come in lots of different sizes, from huge monsters like that down to standard shop size and then down to miniature. The one in the auction can handle a workpiece that is up to 650 inches long. The metal lathes I’ve used at university could handle something up to about 30 inches probably. The miniature lathe I used to have for wood turning, and kept in my apartment bedroom (nowhere else for it!) had a max workpiece length of 12 inches. And that lathe cost a couple hundred dollars. And is also incidentally for sale, albeit residing in a closet in Seattle.
Here’s another one:
From http://www.nawcc.org/museum/nwcm/galleries/early/wtchlathel.htm
Watchmaker’s Lathe, c.1945
Lane Cove Engineering Company
Sydney, Australia
This 6mm Lanco Watchmaker’s lathe was developed by the donor based on a 6mm Lorche lathe. They were produced by the Taylor and then later Lanco during the postwar years in Australia.Donated by Jack Percival #112273
1997.30
Best wishes,
Jerry
I wish they had put something in the picture so I could judge the size better. It said “6mm”, but what is it that is 6 mm? I guess the knobs and things have to be big enough for a person’s hand to use. I would love to see an example of how it was used. It sure is pretty.
This is the best picture I could find to give a sense of the size of a watchmaker’s lathe:
Best wishes,
Jerry
Thanks! Really nice photo too.
The “Clock Jobber’s Handbook” 1889, a reprint from Lindsay Publications has a picture of that watchmaker’s lathe.