Engineering machine tools often had very long working lives and were passed from firm to firm, their provenance becoming more vague and shrouded in rumour and mystery.
Even by those standards the story behind this machine seems extraordinary. A horizontal boring, facing and milling machine, it ended its days in the Greenock works of J Gardiner and Company. However, according to what Summerlee staff were told when they acquired the machine in the mid-1980s it was used to make weaponry in both the early and later years of the 20th century.
The story is that the machine was used to make torpedoes during the First World War and later on made parts for Seacat missiles. If anyone can verify this I would love to hear from them.
The machine was built sometime around 1914 by Kearns and Company of Manchester.
We would be very interested to hear from anyone who worked for Gardiners as we have a number of machine tools from them. You can drop me an e-mail at ParkesJ@culturenl.co.uk.
By the 1890s it was becoming common to find American machine tools in Scottish engineering works. This example was built by F E Reed and Company of Worcester, Massachusetts who built machine tools of the very highest quality.
This lathe was used in Greenock, first by the Scott Shipbuilding and Engineering Company and then after the Second World War at Gardners Brass Foundry.
