Tuesday 3 February 2009

A pretty rare cutting lathe

When he was young, Les Paul (the legendary Gibson guy), was cutting acetates in his bedroom on portable devices such as Presto lathes.
There's many different Presto models and cutterheads, but a very interesting one is the portable system designed by the BBC during WWII.

But Les Paul didn't only design guitars and cut records, he also designed a cutting lathe...

It's the Arcturus:



Just click on the pictures for a much better resolution.



Very little is known about this machine, but what we know so far is that the turntable platter is a Cadillac flywheel!!! And that it also has wood bearings... Mounted on this lathe is a very very rare Van Epps cutterhead, extremely little is known on that one too.

Apparently Arcturus Company was (or is?) based in Los Angeles, hard to find info about it...
Could anybody help?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sanglante mais créative cette WW2...