Headstock and Back gear

Below left: Looking down on the headstock shows a clear view of the back-gear, unlike the B2, the back-gear on the C3 is of traditional type and moved into place via a lever. A pin on top of the casting keeps the spindle locked in place both in and out of mesh. Instead of the more common push-pull knob to release the Bull wheel this C3 has a sliding bolt. The three smaller spur gears in front of the large back gear transmits the drive to either of the two mandrels (both of which are removeable). The single gear can be moved across via a small rack and pinion (using a special key when back-gear is being used to drive the lathe. Interestingly. on the earlier C3 lathes with back gear the centre height is 51⁄8" without Back gear the height is 5" This seems rather strange as the back gear version requires a slightly different height for the tailstock as well. This must have added another production line item as presumably there was an unavoidable reason as to why there were minor differences in height. Later models produced at the new factory at Wahren had numerous small modifications including back geared versions now supplied at the standard 5" height.

<img src="Pittler.jpg" alt="Pittler C3 lathe headstock"/>

On top of the casting are two original brass screw type grease pots for the mandrel bearings The mandrel bore itself is listed in catalogues as 3/4" and the taper is very similar to MT3 but appears to be very slightly different and as yet unknown to me. Below: The rather long mandrel thread shown below is 40 mm /8G Interestingly, a translated German Pittler catalogue dated 1894 refers to both metric and Whitworth threads being in use with option to choose either one.

The rather long mandrel thread shown above is 40 mm /8 tpi Whitworth, a strange combination of both metric and imperial

Above: the sliding bolt that releases the pulley for operating the backgear. Below left: The mandrel thread is extra long for added strength and stability.

Above: Early machines such as this one were supplied complete with a set of three mandrel threading taps, the C3 having 40mm/ 8G taps and the B2 20mm/ 16G these luckily came with both my lathes and enables the user to thread backplates etc. Below: comparing the huge difference in mandrel size of a pair of C3 and B2 threading taps.