William Findlay (Wil-Fin) and Son were tool dealers with retail premises in 'The Side', near Newcastle city centre. They appeared in Kelley's Directory from the mid 1920s to the mid 1970s and were variously described as 'Tool Dealers', 'Machine Tool Dealers' and 'Machine Tool Specialists'. They did not describe themselves as manufacturers and their premises (which still bore their name in 1990, despite having been boarded up for many years), was only suitable for a retail or wholesale trade, not manufacture.
Lathes sold under their brand ranged from the crude - though in some cases with taper roller bearings - for amateur use, to more sophisticated, larger, geared-head models for light-industrial users. Advertisements were infrequent with non, for example, appearing in the Model Engineer magazine of the 1930s and 1940s. Possibly, like Portass in Sheffield, they relied upon a largely regional clientele. The company's smaller "Electrolathe" (the reason for name is a mystery) was an entirely conventional machine of somewhat crude appearance with a flat-topped V-edged bed and a headstock fitted with taper-roller bearings and a spindle carrying a 3-step V-pulley. Simple cast-aluminium guards covered the backgears (in the illustration below the left-hand cover is missing) whilst the changewheel banjo was just a simple single-slot affair carried outboard on the very simplest kind of bolt-on leadscrew bearing hanger. 
Of the geared-head lathes the most commonly-encountered Wilfin is of  6" centre height and around 28" between centres. All versions of this appear to have been fitted with a removable bed gap that allowed, once it was removed, a  maximum diameter of  16" to be turned on a faceplate.
With 6 speeds - 28, 59, 115, 168, 353 and 692 rpm - the geared headstock was driven by double V-belts from a motor bolted to the back of the casting; however, it may be that other drive systems were employed, including one with the motor fitted to a swiveling plate low down on the headstock-end plinth.  Although the main headstock spindle carried a substantial 1.5-inch threaded nose its through bore was only  5/8" and the morse taper a No. 2. The reason for these odd figures is solved when the shaft diameter through the headstock is measured - and found to be  just 1-inch. As a further aid to short life the designer arranged for the main spindle gear cluster to be made in steel and to run directly on the shaft. Consequently, with lubrication by splash, there is a tendency for this assembly to seize and so the use of an anti-friction additive - or the fitting of bronze bushes inside the gear -  is recommended. Whilst the main spindle ran on taper roller bearings the gearbox input and layshafts were supported in plain bronze bearings - and non had any form of oil seal. As a consequence, when used at high speeds, a geared-head Wilfin is likely to loose a considerable amount of lubricant to leakage.
A separate power shaft, permanently geared to the leadscrew, was fitted to drive the sliding and surfacing feeds. Both selection and engagement of feeds was by a single push-pull knob on the front face of the apron - unfortunately the mechanism involved had no means of being quickly released and loaded up badly as a cut was taken. As some means of comfort, an adjustable overload clutch was fitted for the times when no amount of wrestling with the button would get it to move.
During the 1930s a Wilfin wood-turning lathe was also manufactured and patented under No. 414496 - this indicating (allowing for usual delays in patent applications being processed) a start year of 1934 or 1935.
If any reader has a Wilfin lathe, or any knowledge of the makers, the writer would be interested to hear from them.