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What was to become the Wade Precision Bench Lathe was first produced in 1872 as the "No. 3" lathe of the American Watch Tool Company. To obtain high speeds with reliability and great accuracy, it used a headstock spindle and bearing assembly constructed along the lines of the company's "all-hard" watchmakers' lathes with a hardened spindle running in glass-hard bearings - this being the finest assembly the technology of the day could provide. The centre height was 3.5" and the drive, by flat belt naturally, from a choice of wall or ceiling-mounted countershafts. From this original design sprang many variations with examples often adapted for production work in the factories of watch, clock and instrument makers.
When the American Watch Tool Company (in the ownership of the Metz Company) went into voluntary liquidation in 1917, the Bench Lathe line was bought at auction by the Wade company in January, 1918 and then followed the same, slow, evolutionary path of its many competitors to become, in its final form (as reached by the early 1930s) an all-V-belt design with a high-speed ball and roller-bearing supported spindle and mounted on a self-contained, under-drive cabinet stand with an infinitely-variable speed drive unit.
As the years passed the bed was also made heavier and the tool rest slide given a greater travel of 4.5" - so, if your American Watch Tool Company lathe has less than this, you have an early machine. Wade appear to have continued using the markings of the American Watch Tool Company on their lathe beds for some years after the takeover - but for exactly how long is uncertain.
Three lathes were offered, the Nos. 3, 5 and 7, which differed only in their maximum collet capacity - that of the No. 3 lathe being 0.5", the No. 5 0.75" and the No. 7 1". As the maximum capacity of the collets increased so, naturally, did the spindle bore, together with necessary modifications to the bearings and spindle-nose fittings - the No. 3 lathe carried a 1.5" x 12 tpi thread, the No. 5 a 1.75 x 12 tpi and the No. 7 a 2" x 10 tpi. The No. 5 and No. 7 lathes were fitted first with ball-bearing headstocks and later a combination of the double-row cylindrical roller and ball bearings; however, from the beginning to the end of its production life the No. 3 lathe, with its reduced collet capacity, continued to use the traditional and tried-and-tested hardened-steel, double-angle cone bearings. Although the maker's literature did not specify the particular collet fittings each lathe took the No. 7 appears to have been available with both the popular 5C and, according to correspondence with Hardinge, a 5WA collet - a size just a little larger than a 4C.
The swing of all Models was 7" (a 3.5" centre height) and, whilst the length of the bed remained the same at 31", the capacity between centres varied a little according to the particular Model: the No. 3 accepted 17", the No. 5 16" and the No. 7 15.5". The bed carried a rear T slot into which accessories could be mounted and, although not advertised as a feature (there were no accessories to take advantage of it) on the early lathes with round mounting feet it was possible to reverse the bed and so bring the T slot to the front. Its competitor lathe, the "Waltham" (made in the same town of Waltham, Mass.), took advantage its bed's symmetrical form and advertised several accessories which employed the reversed mounting.
The tailstock, which had a base hand-scraped to exact alignment with the headstock, carried a hardened and ground barrel fitted with a zeroing micrometer dial, finely-engraved ruler markings and carried the usual, and inadequate, No. 1 Morse (or occasionally Jarno) taper centre. The feed screw was of Acme form, and ran in a bronze nut.
The weights of the machines, with standard equipment and a Compound Slide Rest were, respective to their model numbers: 125 lbs., 172 lbs., and 184 lbs..
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