PITTLER TURRET LATHE PART 3

My mentor was Emil Molnar a Hungarian whose light engineering firm would take on almost anything but who specialized in parts for racing Manx Norton singles. Emil had the most esoteric Soviet machine tools which he bought at auction for a song before renovating them.

Clumsy inelegant, ugly lumps they were fitted with solenoid controls which were a bugger to repair. However despite the ugly heavy nature of these tools they were really excellent and turned out lovely work once you got used to their clumsy nature.

Another oddball machine, not Russian, was a Pittler turret lathe an amazingly accurate albeit weird design which boasted a vertical faceplate into which many tool bits can fit to carry out a sequence of operations. This was my baby because its so precise you can make watch parts and those are naught compared to the nuts and bolts the thickness of a hair used to fasten circuit board components to satellite electronics as the cold of space can otherwise cause copper traces to lift off the boards.

So dithering my way through a leisurely breakfast, I flipped my mental Rolodex, organising my assets until there was nothing left but to dial the enigmatic number provided and hope the result would be worthwhile as funds were getting a bit low and I had bills to pay and resources to acquire