This lathe is the
legendary Lorch LAS. It was made in 1965 by the company about which I have been told two contradictory things. According to my friend and colleague,
Burkhard Schaffer, a native of the Frankfurt region, the company takes its name from the small town of Lorch near Frankfurt, apparently pronounced Lorsh, not Lork, the word being an exception to the usual German pronunciation rules. However,
Eberhard Falck, who is another native of the Franfurt region, and Lorch collector, writes:
"The name of the company has nothing to do with the town Lorch that is located East of Stuttgart. The company Lorch, Schmidt /amp Co. was set up in the 1880s in Frankfurt (its old company premises still exist and bear its name) by two gentlemen of the respective names and their associates. Lorch is pronounced more like 'lorkh' than like 'lorsh' actually (standard pronounciation, no exception) and the town with the latter pronounciation is indeed spelled 'Lorsch'. It is the one some 60 km south of Frankfurt". Burkhard is a very brilliant man, but was probably guessing when he came over for dinner one night, when I suggested that his relatives might have made that very tool. It is more likely that Eberhard's suggestion is the correct one, and that English speakers should pronounce Lorch, Lork. If any other German speakers would like to comment this one could run and run.
The lathe is a small (60mm centre height, 300mm between centres) toolmakers lathe of extraordinarily high precision and build quality. It is supposed to have MT1 in both head and tailstocks, but the bore in the headstock has no internal taper except a short length of self-releasing taper to accommodate the Lorch collets, which seem to be peculiar to Lorch.
If pains are taken to ensure the bed is correctly aligned, and again the Lorch falls behind the
Myford in ease of setting up, this lathe gets reasonable precision very easily from the dial micrometres. Despite the lathe being small I have used it to turn stock up to 50mm, and faced iron castings up to about 100mm using the Lorch 4-jaw chuck. It also has a limited milling capacity using a
Chester vertical slide, and I have managed to mill, albeit very slowly and painfully, dovetails and slots.
In terms of design the Lorch might be thought of as atypically German in that it has all the build quality we expect from Germany, but bits of the design and specification, such as the cross slide, leave one wondering why it was done in the way in which it was, and not some simpler and better solution taken. For instance, the compound slide will not rotate around far enough to allow set over thread cutting techniques to be used without interfering with the cross slide. Had the compound slide feed screw handle been on a shaft some 8mm longer then this would be possible. Overall there are mistakes in design which should have been cleared up during the production run of the LAS which makes the tool more difficult to use than it should be, and one might think that this is not typical for German industrial production, however, in the Summer of 2005 I bought a German car (VW Polo diesel) which has all the same characteristics. It is very nicely made, especially for a cheap car, but has some absurd design features. Things such as proper points by which to support the car for routine maintenance are provided. Unfortunately you need two at each corner as you have to jack it up, then support it properly with stands before working under the car. Unfortunately VW provide only one obvious jacking and support point at each corner, so you end up having to jack from some point on it which is not really recommended for that purpose. This all leads me to question whether those in German industry who design things actually spend some time using those products, and if so why don't they design out the sometimes ridiculous little eccentricities which make those items less usable than they would be otherwise.
On the other hand, just in case we are developing the ideas that German design lacks practicality, one feature the Lorch LAS has which the
Myford does not is a positive, and highly accurate feed stop. This essentially means that when turning with a very slow feed the lathe can just be set up and left to get on with things. The feed will automatically be disengaged when the cut has been taken. This is an immensely useful thing to have on a small lathe, and I use it all the time. So the people who designed the LAS did actually use them as this is the sort of thing which users invariably want.
If I get a bit more room to house a lathe I shall probably sell the Lorch and get a
Myford seven series as this is probably the best lathe in its class which is still in production. Alternatively a mid 1960s Colchester Bantam would be an excellent instrument for my purposes.
The Lorch equipment and tooling I have with the LAS are:
