email: tony@lathes.co.uk
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"Arrow" Lathe - Japan

Several lathes for watchmakers have been identified as being manufactured by the Japanese machine-tool company "Matsuda" (Matsudaseiki) (http://www.matsudaseiki.co.jp). Some were entirely conventional WW (Webster Whitcombe) types with one rather different - a miniature precision lathe whose headstock took 10 mm collets. This "Arrow" was a very robustly built little job and with an especially wide bed.  Little is known the Japanese maker's early background, or characteristics of the small conventional precision machines they manufactured, and if any reader can supply additional photographs, copies of sales brochures or maintenance manuals - or details of how the lathe performs - I would be very interested to hear from you. Another lathe maker using the Arrow name is an Indian Company, now a maker of CNC machines - Arrow Machine Tools of No. 18, Old No. 1, Balaji Nagar,Ambattur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Yet one more is an 8 mm WW (Webster Whitcombe) type possibly by Boley & Leinen. The lathe was found in fine, original condition in Prague, in the Czech Republic a centre of a region that had, from the 1800s, an extensive, well-founded  and very successful machine tool industry. Oddly, no watchmakers are known to originate from this country, the former Czeckoslovakia and - as there are a few differences between the Leinen and the "Arrow" - this might be a very high-class copy made for the CZ home market..


Arrow with lever-operation of the collet closer and tailstock barrel, and fitted with a compound slide rest.

A single-foot, short-bed WW-Type Arrow Lathe

Another WW-Type Arrow but with a reversed headstock
pulley and a light-duty, push-spindle tailstock

A twin-foot, long-bed Arrow Type WW


email: tony@lathes.co.uk
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"Arrow" Lathe - Japan