An Introduction: Chris Collins and Morris Tilly Project

[jack neville]

Yes Mike. Just acquired the lathe recently. It is in very good condition.

The Tillies do require alot of work but Chris has been very lucky to get his hands on plenty of parts sufficient to rebuild two of them. They are however easy to work on and not big heavy components to lug around.

The steel I use for resetting springs is actually a bucket wheel pin, a relic from a floating gold dredge that used to operate on the Avoca River at Amphitheatre back in the 50's-60's I think. The dredge sank in mysterious circumstances and was broken up for scrap. An uncle of mine who was working on it around that time told me they found bungs missing from the pontoons when it was scrapped. My father who was a local plumber in Amphitheatre at the time acquried the pin and used it as an anvil. It is a little over 2' high and 5 1/2" in diameter. The smaller legs were added for stability. I welded the two pieces of flat to the top to make the bridge and hammer the spring leaves between them as I move the leaf across the top. You can see they have distorted from use. Works well.