Any old Draftsmen reading this?

As you may know, I'm trying to date my Haighton Milling machine (Hardinge UM copy) .

A chance discovery, under the coolant pump, of a 'serial' number beginning with the letters DRG (BS standard abbreviation for drawing) has confirmed that the 'serial' numbers on many of the machine's parts are actually drawing numbers.

By a strange co-incidence, this evening I had a phone call from a guy who has pictures of his Barker lathe on Tony Griffiths' lathes.co.uk site. While studying the machine I noticed that the serial number on his machine is dated: 2470/412 decoding to Feb. 1947

Does anyone know if dating the drawing numbers like this was standard practice at the time?

If the practice was defined in a British Standard (e.g. BS308:1943*) I may be able to date my machine (or at least the drawings for it) by the same process; e.g. the parts are numbers 3561/A1/xx and 3565/xx - March '56 would be about right from other dating evidence.



Bill Todd

* I have on-line access to the latest BS documents, but I am unable to read the 1943 edition.