Model of tyre bender and drilling machine combined, scale 1:4, by W Affleck, Prospect Works, Swindon

William Affleck was an engineer who worked as an apprentice in Gateshead before working for Maudslay's in London and then for the GWR works in Swindon before setting up business independently in 1853. The company seems to have been a flourishing general engineers, employing 17 men, making cast drain covers and the like as well as mechanisms like this tyre bending machine, which may have had applications in wagon-wrighting. Given Affleck's traning with Maudslay's, the prominent London engineers, the machine's construction might usefully compared with that of items known to have been made by that firm, to ascertain how far it followed the practices established by the Maudslay workforce.