Designed by a Myford employee, one Edward Barr, immediately after WW2 - the patent GB620276 being applied for in January, 1947 and granted in 1949 - the Myford ML8 woodturning lathe was in production from the early 1950s until the mid 1980s. With the first versions painted cream, later ones silver and the last ones in a rather pleasing shade of light green, Myford's neat, well-made and beautifully finished 4-inch centre height wood-turning lathe enjoyed a large and loyal following. Intended for economical production, the lathe had a bed made from a length of seamless drawn steel tube (in an attractive dull nickel-plated finish), and was available in three standard capacities of 30, 36 and 42 inches between centres. A standard 30-inch machine was catalogued as the ML8 but, when fitted with bowl turning, became the ML8A and, with 36 and 42-inch beds as, respectively, the ML8B and ML8C. The makers also offered separate bed sections, complete with individual mounting feet, to give a maximum length capacity of 72". An important feature of the patent was the method of locking the saddle and No. 1 Morse taper tailstock to the bed, this being achieved, in both cases, by a lever that passed through a long slot cut into the front face of the bed to turn a 2-start thread that pulled up a large clamp formed on its outside surface to the inside shape of the tube. The arrangement worked well, giving the lever a very short throw and an immediate and very strong clamping action with, on the saddle, an extension to the clamping bolt that simultaneously slackened the hand T-rest assembly allowing it to be positioned at will.
Running in angular-contact ball bearings, the No. 1 Morse taper , 13/32" bore ground-finish headstock spindle was held inside a headstock with a lift-off cover and carried a 4-step V-pulley with a ring of 24 holes to assist in dividing and marking out; the nose thread was 1" x 12 t.p.i on the right-hand side and 7/8" x 12 t.p.i on the (left-hand) outboard bowl-turning end.  Unusually, for an amateur's wood lathe, the spindle was provided with proper registers behind the threads to allow the accurate fitting of metal-working chucks and heavier face-plates. The 1425 rpm motor (0.5 hp 3-phase or 0/5 h.p and 0.75 hp 1-phase) was carried on a countershaft unit mounted underneath the lathe on a specially-constructed, adjustable plate and drove upwards to the headstock spindle by a single "link" V-belt. Four speed were available: 700, 1140, 1780 and 2850 rpm.
Although initially available with a wide range of accessories - mortising, planing, sawing, polishing, grinding, bandsaw and metal-turning compound slides - by the end of production only the basic lathe was offered. The ML8 is often found fitted to a longer version of the braced pressed-steel stand offered for the Series 7 metal-turning lathes; a short bed version, the rare ML8S, was also produced--a version normally found mounted on a simple underdrive stand in light angle iron with a pressed-steel top and complete with outboard bowl turning and a metal-working compound slide rest from the ML7..