In about 1950, Vendall Machines, Ltd. made a home-shop wood lathe, plus various polishing and grinding arbors, saw arbors, and 8½" sanding disks, all of them cast from aluminum. Vendall Machines' primary business was in making coin mechanisms for vending machines and arcade games. They are known to have been in business between 1950 and 1973, but data on them is very sparse.

A catalog from Willys Machine Tool Products Reg'd. of 26 Waller St., Ottawa, says that they are the distributors of machine tools and accessories manufactured by Vendall Machines, Ottawa. Many of the products were made from "aircraft aluminum", a material that was in abundance at the end of World War II, and this leads us to date the catalog to the immediate post-war era, 1946 to 1952.

Information Sources

• We have seen a couple of wood lathes of roughly 1950s vintage.
• In researching this company we found several companies with "Vendall" in their name, all of them apparently involved in various aspects of the vending-machine business. We do not know if Vendall Machines of Ottawa is related to any of the other Vendall companies.
• We found three U. S. patents and five Canada patents assigned to this company, all related to coin changers and all issued between 1971 and 1973.
• Years ago, Billboard magazine covered the vending-machine industry, and Vendall Machines, Ltd., merited an occasional mention. Issues mentioning them include 7 October 1950 and 8 July 1967.
• A document, dated September 15, 1971, lists members of the National Automatic Merchandising Association, including

  D. L. Heselton
  Vendall Machines Limited
  110 Isabella Street
  Ottawa, Ontario, Canada