Boley F1

[LucaCan]

Hello All,

Looking at this lathe. It looks to be pretty complete. The paint job looks to be badly done and possibly comes from a school or other industry as it has asset tags. I’m looking for opinions if yah or nah and what price would be acceptable. The motor would probably be replaced as that one may not work in NA. 
Edit: Looks to be different than the F1 from lathe.co.uk. Maybe a frankenlathe?
Thank you

Edited February 28 by LucaCan
Added comment

[nickelsilver]

One of the primary selling points of the F1 was that it was able to do normal lathe work with a slide rest/ T-rest, and also was highly adapted for doing fine work between centers. Originally it came with a normal (not collet holding) tailstock, and another offset tailstock that took special runners for dead center work. There was also a sensitive clutch system that ran off the headstock to power the dead center work.

 

Apart from that it's just a normal lathe with plain conical bearings (not ball-bearings)*. The clamping system for things attached to the bed like the slide and T-rest is less than optimal in my opinion. Complete sets tend to go for a premium, like several thousand+. As this one seems to be missing the tailstock, runners, and drive cone for the headstock for dead center work, I would treat it as a normal lathe with slide rest and a decent set of collets- and the very useful collet holding tailstock. I'd say still in the 1500- 2000 buck territory, perhaps more due to the F1 "coolness"factor.

 

*There's nothing at all wrong with plain bearings. They do need a little more care keeping them oiled and adjusted. Just it seems many assume the F1 has ball bearings due to its closed headstock design.

[Dell]

Don’t know about the lathe nicklesilver is your man for that as I have had nothing to do with Boley but looks to have a fairly comprehensive set of accessories and that is always a bonus , the Multifix motor will run on 220v or 110v but I can’t remember if I had to switch my one or straight of the bat, as for price it’s worth what anyone is prepared to pay for it but I have seen them advertised for £2000 plus what that converts to in your currency I don’t know but if you buy it do it on the assumption that it will need a strip & rebuild.

[LucaCan]

Thank You Dell and nickelsilver for your valuable information.

[praezis]

8 hours ago, nickelsilver said:

There was also a sensitive clutch system that ran off the headstock to power the dead center work.

I think that is the mentioned drive lever:

[nickelsilver]

1 hour ago, praezis said:

I think that is the mentioned drive lever:

 

Yes, but I think it's missing the rubber drive wheel. Which is of no consequence as the thing it drives is also missing (and the rest of the dead center turning stuff). Maybe there's another box of stuff within arm's reach of this machine, with all the missing bits? It's funny how many bare-bones machines are around (this one isn't bare-bones, just missing critical stuff); I guess it explains some of the random accessories that come up for sale.

 

I have a friend in the U.S. who collects Swiss precision machine tools. He bought a Sip jig boring machine (this thing occupies the floor space of a king size bed) that was missing all its tooling, which is fairly specific to Sip. Some time later, 2-3 years (more?), at an auction there were the typical beautiful wooded boxes Sip put their tooling in, and it turns out some numbers matched up and they went to his machine. Crazy luck. Similarly, I bought a Swiss 102 lathe (Habegger, same design as Schaublin), it is a screwcutting lathe but it was missing all its change gears. I figured they were the same as Schaublin but they had a very different bore. A year or two later I was fishing around in the upper floor of a machine dealer, and found a set of change gears, which were actually the set for my machine. Like, the actual missing set (I know because there were a few on the headstock of my machine, and those were the ones missing from this set). Crazy again. I hate when machines get separated from their tooling.

[LucaCan]

It looks nothing like the F1 on lathe.co.uk. Headstock is different and tailstock is also not the same. The original seems to have 2. I think I will pass