Posts from the ‘Engine Turning’ Category

Holtzapffel Volume VI

Holtzapffel Vol. VI 2nd Ed. Compiled by John Edwards

John Edwards has compiled an huge amount of information and has published it as, “Hotzapffel, Volume VI”. He has just received the second edition run from the printers and it is currently available at his web site, Ornamental Turning. I am inserting a link to his site at the bottom of this blog and also adding this book to the bibliography section. This book is more concerned with ornamental turning than engine turning or guilloché, but since many of us have an interest in  both, I think it is very important to note it. John’s web site is a treasure trove of information and an excellent resource. This book was a Herculean effort on John’s part to produce and well worth the investment! It is a prized addition to my library.

To Quote From John’s web site:

“The title of this book is really a stratagem, intended to attract experienced Ornamental Turners who are aware that the great work “Turning and Mechanical Manipulation” by John Jacob and Charles Holtzapffel was planned to be extended to six volumes but only five were completed.  A note by Holtzapffels in Volume V made in preparation for the final volume indicates that Volume VI would deal with the Principles and Practice of Amateur Mechanical Engineering, namely: lathes with sliding rests for metal turning, self-acting and screw-cutting lathes, drilling machines, planing engines, key-groove slotting and paring machines, wheel-cutting and shaping machines, etc.

Interesting though that might be from an historic point of view, very little of Holtzapffel’s material on amateur mechanical engineering has come to the attention of the compiler and, in any event, the subject has been well-covered by other 19th century writers.  The compiler of this book cherishes the instinct that the growing number of Ornamental Turners working at the beginning of the twentieth century would surely have demanded vociferously that Holtzapffel should devote a new volume to the many known ornamental turning techniques and accessories that had not been included in Volume V.  This book is intended to go some way towards filling this gap and it is therefore hoped that it will not be a disappointment to the reader.

Holtzapffel & Co. had long provided hand-written notebooks for buyers of their more exotic equipment, like Epicycloidal and Rose Cutting Frames and Geometric Chucks; some of these are quite rare and some of the information contained in them has never been published generally.  Also, around the turn of the century several typescripts were issued by Holtzapffels describing various forms of Rose-turning apparatus and the automatic drives which were developed to aid their use.

This book brings together these Holtzapffel Notes with contemporary magazine articles describing new apparatus introduced by them subsequent to the publication of Volume 5 in 1884.  Additional material is taken from notes by amateurs about their own inventions and details of some of the patents registered by the inventors.  In order to make this book more comprehensive, some inventions adopted exclusively by other makers have been included; although it is quite unlikely that Holtzapffels would have described any equipment not made by them.  Some of these manuscripts are very rare, not having been published previously, and others were issued to a limited circulation or are from magazines that have long been out of print.  The purpose of this book is to make this information more readily available to ornamental turners of the present time.  For continuity the material is arranged according to subject with Holtzapffel papers and those by other authors interspersed.”

Thanks John!