Went by the yard again this morning and got some better pics, and a better idea how these might work. The jaws that hold the workpiece are on a plate that can be turned left/right, and I presume locked down, I see no provision to turn that plate while working. The jaws are on a common screw shaft, 1 end RH thread, the other LH thread, so that when turned the jaws move in/out together. The cross slide has no feed either, you would just loosen screws, move it to get the offset, then lock it down again. The only "feed" is the lever that would push workpiece into the cutters.
One machine has the boring head looking piece and may have a carbide cutter (the shiny piece in pic). The other cutters are all HSS, most have a radiused cutting profile on OD. The larger flat cutters all have the HSS blades at an angle, I think these would be used in facing type cutting. Last pic shows the jaws that previous owner made, the freshly turned tobacco pipe was held by the stem in those jaws. Some of the cutters had cardboard pieces pressed into blades with numbers on them, not sure if its a profile number or to indicate radius the blades are ground to.
Tobacco pipe may not have anything to do with these machines and was just clamped in jaws:shrug:? The pallet of cutters may not go with this machine, they just happen to fit it:shrug:? Nobody recognized the seller of the scrap, and there were other woodshop related items in his load, the rest of the stuff was obvious junk, these appear to have been better taken care of.
