Watch fusee cutting engine.

This machine tool for cutting fusees is of a type used in the second half of the eighteenth century. It resembles the fusee engine illustrated in Ford, Whitmore, & Brunton's catalogue of c.1775.

The engine is intended to be mounted in a vice, and when the handle (not original) is turned, it drives through pinions the chuck holding the fusee blank. At the same time a threaded block travels along the screw cut on the shaft and turns a lever pivoted at the front of the frame. The movement of the lever makes the table carrying the cutting tool traverse at a rate which depends on the position of its point of attachment to the table, which is adjustable.