Yet another small English lathe made from the 1920 to the early 1950s the backgeared and screwcutting  Ideal 3.75" x 14" was manufactured by the Ideal Machine & Tool Co, London E8 but often badged and advertised by the dealers J. Willimott and Sons of Chilwell, Nottinghamshire, as their own product. It was also advertised by Buck and Ryan (well-known tool and machinery suppliers) as the "Faircut" - though the machine obviously had nothing to do with the Sheffield-based company whose lathes were of an entirely different design - and also in the large mail-order catalogue of Tyzack & Son. As a result the lathe is often found without any maker's identification: there were no names cast into the bed and the writer would not be surprised to find examples carrying a "Gamages" badge. The lathe was steadily developed during its production run and included numerous small and not-so-small changes in design. Several alterations were made to the headstock bearings - split pinch-blot in two versions, draw-in taper and bolt-down cap - and at least three designs of apron with an apron that carried either a simple, bolt-on full leadscrew nut (under the saddle) or clasp nuts carried in short and long castings. Even the shape of bed mounting feet and position of the holding-down bolts was altered - some lathes having them to the left, others on the centre line.
The Ideal was a rather light, insubstantial machine but with many useful and well-though-out design details fitted as standard: tumble reverse, split leadscrew nuts, backgear, elegant (but fragile) cast-iron handles with distinctive swept-back spokes, a leadscrew handwheel and a gap bed. Rather strangely (and another useful identification point) on many models both the cross and top slides were T slotted. However, changes were also made in this department with some lathes having the cross-feed screw carried in a boss that bolted to the front of the apron (so leaving the screw exposed as the slide advanced) whilst others had a completely different design with a plate bolted to the end of the cross slide and covered ways.
A traditional, English-style, flat-topped bed with 60-degree angle edges was used and early models were fitted with flat-belt drive and simple parallel plain-bush "split" headstock bearings, adjusted by a split in the bearing housing closed down by a clamp bolt. Later machines were considerably improved by the use of a heavier, more rigid headstock casting with a flat front face (that gave improved support to the bearing posts) and the fitting of  "draw-in" bronze bearings whose clearances could be set by screwed rings which pulled them into the headstock casting together with (unusually for this class and age of machine) a ball-bearing thrust race at the left-hand end. The headstocks of machines made in the final years of production were further strengthened by the use of bolt-down cap bearings, an unusual fitting to be found on any small, inexpensive lathe. Yet another version, a "poverty" special was also manufactured (badged "Willimott") with distinctive pinch-bolt bearings having long extended "flanges" at the front. This lathe also had V-belt drive, a single swivelling top slide, a full leadscrew nut and the necessary dog clutch to disengage the drive.
Because from the start of production all models had a handwheel fitted to the leadscrew - and hence a method of moving the carriage steadily and slowly under hand control - early examples had the apron handwheel geared directly to the rack (giving a usefully rapid movement up and down the bed, but making it difficult to use for taking a cut) whilst later machines were given an intermediate gear that produced a finer and more controllable feed. On "direct-gear" models the carriage handwheel was carried on a bracket cast as an extension to the right-hand side of the apron but when (at some unknown date) the intermediate gear was introduced, the apron become a proper full-length and full depth type. 
The changewheels were carried first in a single-slot bracket and then, to improve the threading range and allow a finer power feed to be generated, in a bracket formed as an unusually narrow-angle fork. Quite why the angle chosen was so tight is not known but it certainly limits the arrangement of compound gears that can be carried - the early South Bend 9-inch (as the Model 40)5 also underwent a similar transformation from single to forked bracket and details of how this affected the threading and feed arrangements can be read here. On all examples of the Ideal inspected by the writer tumble reverse was fitted as standard and each had a rather over-wide gap in the bed that required, if working close up to the faceplate, the top slide to be well advanced if the cutting tool were to reach it without the carriage running over fresh air.
Some thought had obviously been given by the designer  to the needs of the model and experimental engineer who intended to mount a milling slide - and who therefore needed as much cross slide travel as possible: to obtain this he engineered the cross-slide end bracket in the form of a long tube to carry the cross feed screw - so allowing the slide to be drawn all the way back until it met the inner face of the handwheel.
Unfortunately the tailstock suffered from that weakness common to so many cheaper lathes, an arrangement that relied upon the closing down of a long slot in the casting to grip and lock the barrel. As some slight compensation the method of clamping the tailstock to the bed was the well designed (if rather old-fashioned in concept) method of the cam spindle running longitudinally through the lower part of the casting and emerging underneath the barrel handwheel. In line with the improvements seen in other areas, as the design matured the tailstock was also strengthened by the use of a generally heavier casting with the previously curved sides somewhat straightened out. If any reader has an original Ideal the writer would be interested to hear from them..