Similar in operating principle to the much lighter Verschoyle lathe, little is known of the provenance of the 2.5" x 8" "AM" lathe, except that it was marketed through major tools suppliers during the 1920 and 1930s. Some versions were also badged "DAMACO-5 Made By Danish Machine Company Ltd, Copenhagen, K.". The latter was a firm established 1929 by Erik Jespersen, an engineer returning to his native land, having previously emigrated to New Zealand where he had founded, in 1911, the very successful Manawatu Machine Exchange Company (agricultural and machinery repairs) on Rangitikei Street in Palmerston North.
Shown in the picture below, with what appears to be a hand-operated flywheel-cum-pulley, the machine was normally supplied with either with a foot-treadle unit that drove a two-step pulley by round-rope, or with a flat-belt fast-and-loose system for drive from a speed-reducing countershaft. From the input shaft the drive passed through a two-speed gear, built into the headstock, that provided a step-up ratio to give a higher top speed. The relatively complex drive system together with the lathe's heavy cast-iron construction (with bed and headstock formed "as-one") a very complete specification and a high price (at £10 it cost the same as a Portass Model S on a cast-iron treadle-equipped stand) suggests that this was a more serious machine than a cursory glance might suggest.   
Power driven, the carriage was moved in a most unusual and ingenious way: at the headstock end of the leadscrew was a gear, used to provide an "indexing" feed, rather in the manner commonly employed on the table of a shaper. The gear was turned by a spring-loaded plunger, carried in a cylindrical housing that was rocked backwards and forwards by a miniature crankshaft driven from an eccentric mounted on the inside face of the wide, flat drive pulley. The fitting allowed the feed to be set in neutral - a cross pin sat in a grove on top of the housing - engaged by being dropped into mesh, or, by being lifted and turned through 180 degrees, reversed. The mechanism thus provided a very quick way of reversing the feed, and  an instant one of stopping it - lifting the pin disengaging the drive. For hand feeds an unusually large "balanced" handwheel was fitted at the tailstock end of the screw. Later versions were modified and used a conventional changewheel system - thus becoming a proper screwcutting lathe. Fourteen gear were provided that allowed the generation of both English (from 6 to 120 t.p.i) and a range of Metric threads .
While a proper compound slide rest was included in the price, the feed screws were ordinary threads (not square section), there were no micrometer dials and the top slide screw was set along the edge of its slide rather than in the middle - a position which would have resulted in both an undesirable amount of leverage being applied to the 60 degree sides of the slide's ways and wear from swarf. Happily, both slide handles - and those fitted to the leadscrew and tailstock - were of the proper "balanced" type, through that fitted to the top slide was rather too large and, by catching on the cross slide when the top slide was swivelled, would probably have limited the lathes ability to turn steep tapers.
Fitted with a proper eccentric clamp and hand lever to lock it to the bed, the tailstock was decently engineered - yet the temptation to save money was just too great for the maker for, by arranging for the barrel to be crudely clamped by a thumb screw bearing directly against, a few pennies were taken off the production costs.
In standard form the lathe was supplied with a lever-scroll chuck with both sets of jaws, a catch plate, two centres, three turning tools, changewheels for screwcutting and a foot-operated treadle attachment.
If any reader has an AM or Damaco the author would be pleased to hear from you.