Previously unknown until one emerged in 2025, the heavily built WW-type Sectov watchmakers' lathe was made in Bienne, Switzerland, a town renowned for its connections to the watch, clock-making, and high-precision machine tool industries.
Although the Sectov looks remarkably similar in design to the single-foot version of the Swiss Favorite No.2, instead of the Favorite's flat-topped bed with narrow vertical edges, the Setov used a traditional WW bed with a flat top but bevelled edges, this allowing parts and accessories from other WW lathes to be employed. Unlike the Favorite, whose bed foot was in two parts held together by an eccentric slot that allowed it to be removed and fitted with accessories, etc, that on the Sector was cast in one piece; it is not known if the Sectov was offered with a longer, two-foot bed.
Also of similar appearance to that used on the Favorite, the compound slide rest had twin parallel T-slots, and was fitted with conical micrometer dials, though those on the Sectov sloped outwards, with the ones on the Favourite facing inwards. With four bolts holding the cross-slide endplate, the makers of the Favourite made sure that the mounting was as rigid as possible; the Sector made a small saving by using only two.
Losing out to the Favourite in only having three instead of four grooves in the headstock pulley, nevertheless, the headstock spindle would undoubtedly have been hardened, ground and lapped to run in a pair of bronze bearings. Lubrication was, like that on the Favourite, provided by built-in capillary-action oilers with an oil-sight glass on the rear face of the headstock, this system being a considerable advance on the hit-and-miss oil-can method, thought by so many competing manufacturers to be adequate. The spindle nose was bored to accept draw-tube-retained standard Schaublin draw-in collets, while the outer flange of the headstock pulley was drilled with two circles of 60 and 48 dividing holes. Unfortunately, unlike the robust indexing pin that passed though a boss on the front of the Favorite's left-hand spindle bearing, the Sectov made do with a plate fitted somewhat inconveniently at the back of the headstock; it also lacked the ring of 12 holes drilled into the opposite end of the pulley on the Favorite that was intended to be used as a means of locking the spindle when changing nose fittings..
If you have a Sectov lathe, or any literature about them, the writer would be interested to hear from you.