Built up by Dennis Turk, the well-known American restorer of antique machine tools, this is, in effect, a brand-new 1946 Model A 9-inch Precision bench lathe (by the end of World War Two (in 1945) the marketing department must have considered the term Workshop to be down-market, and it was dropped from the catalogs - the single description Precision being used instead. The lathe shown only has three parts that are not new: the headstock and countershaft castings and the changewheel guard.  Every other item is NOS (new old stock). After the factory-clearance auction of 2000, two brother purchased 190 tons of left-over material and amongst it found the bed. Numbered during 1946, it had been put on a shelf, properly wrapped in a protective in brown oil-paper, and never used. It was purchased by Dennis in 2001 and over the next six years he was able to accumulate, a few at a time, all the other parts. The stand is particularly rare, and an example the first style of wooden-topped, metal-framed stand that South Bend offered in 1946 when steel was again freely available after WW2 - note the original and pristine SB logo on the right-hand stand leg
As a Model A, this lathe has a screwcutting gearbox, power sliding and surfacing - but is also fitted with the optional, very large micrometer dials (that on the top slide being especially rare) a lever-action collet closer and, instead of the usual 3-step flat-belt, a 4-step V-belt drive to the headstock..