Golden Era Machinery!

[Scuffy]

Hi all!! Haven't been around much due to some back problems (and not they aren't related lifting to what comes up later in this post! lol ) BUT I happened t acquire something this past weekend that I was quite excited about and I figured I let ya in on it.

Long story short I am now the proud owner of a Kearney & Trecker Milwaukee vertical mill. Best part... I knew that it was old but I didn't know how old exactly. A nice gentleman on another forum researched the serial number for me and come to find out it was #19 of 20 completed in June of 1945!

I'm going to be restoring it over the fall and winter, re-wiring, painting etc. Gotta love the lines on it! Very stylish even for a piece of shop equipment! The happy dance I did when I got the okay from my friend to have was probably hilarious. Hey- whaddya want? It was a FREE machine! It was either claim her or see her off to the scrap yard. All the movements seem to work just fine. Just a bit of surface rust from sitting under ratty tarp in a barn with a leaky roof for the past 12 years. When I can make it in here I'll keep ya updated with pix of the progress for anyone interested.

 

[LocktownDog]

Great find! And at the perfect price! :eusa_clap

 

[John in Covina]

That's a beauty.

My dad was a machinest and I got to watch him make the power belts out of leather stock once or twice.

One Easter my cousins were visiting and the dial for the TV tuner cracked and came off. My dad took the pieces and in a short period of time made a bullet proof replacement knob out of delrin and stainless steel on his milling machine in the basement. (We had 2 lathes and a milling machine down there.)

I got to work with the lathes doing final cut and finish on precision washers. (Whoopie!) I was glad to help and got to listen to music pretty much as loud as I wanted to down there.

 

[David Conwill]

That is very, very cool. What's great about so-called "obsolete" machinery is that it still does exactly what it ought to and is perfect for the home hobbyist who doesn't care about mass producing things. Lots of guys on the HAMB and the Garage Journal doing this sort of thing. I'm jealous, but I don't think I'll ever acquire the skills to operate a mill. Which is too bad, it's a great skill for a car guy to have.

This reminds me of an interesting book I once checked out from my high school library. It was written by one of the Manhattan Project scientists in the 1950s and the premise was essentially how to survive a thermonuclear war with Russia. His idea was to stop scrapping all the '30s and '40s machinery that had helped us win the war but was now "obsolete" and to cache it in the desert. That way when the nuclear war destroyed the city centers, we'd only be set back by ten or twenty years instead of sent back to the stone age. Alas, they didn't do it, otherwise what a treasure trove we'd have of old machines, aircraft, and vehicles.

I think the Soviets had that "if it ain't broke, don't throw it away" mentality and that's why there are still neat things like T-34s and machinery to produce Ford Model A engines coming out of the old Soviet Bloc countries.

-Dave

 

[freebird]

Congratulations on the mill! I think Dad "had" a band saw that matched that...it possibly burned in a shop fire about 6 or 8 years ago. He does have the drill press below, the picture was taken just prior to the company I worked for going under.

It's been awhile since I've seen it, but I am sure it is not in working order now...and get angry every time I think about it :rage: but this was a drill press that I used on a frequent basis at my job before the company went under. It's a Walker Turner,floor model, and from the look of it would imagine it's from the thirties. The reason I'm fuming is that the company gave it to my Dad, 2 almost 3 years ago, and it is still sitting on a trailer with a tarp over it,but it is rusting and will probably freeze up before long. Dad keeps putting off making a place for it in the shop, mainly because his knees are bad from working on concrete for so many years, but he could have someone else set it in the dry at least.

 

[StraightEight]

Very cool. Wish I had a foyer big enough to display such a conversation piece. At least now we know where to go to get our cylinder heads shaved.

 

[jeep44]

Way back when I was a Diemaker apprentice, we had a school in a corner of the plant I still work in . It was filled with machine tools of every sort-quite a few of them were of WW2 vintage,with tags on them saying things like "war finish".
The school is long gone,and I imagine the machines were scrapped out. The big problem with things like lathes or mills is moving them. Providing power to them is another problem,too. I have a small machine shop for my little projects now, and it was enough of a task for me to get a Harbor Freight 9x20 lathe down the stairs!

 

[Nick D]

I have a lot of my Papa's old tools. The hand-held bandsaw I've never used. But my favorite, and one that gets used a lot, is an old Delta drill press. The pulleys and belt are all out in the open and adjustable. Plus it's got Papa's homemade foot pedal on the power cord, which is great. Just make sure it's unplugged when not in use!

 

[cooncatbob]

The main problem with Old Arn (iron) is moving it which is why smaller vintage machines like my 1953 South Bend 9A sell for more then their bigger brothers.
http://oldarn.com/

 

[MPicciotto]

The Museum I volunteer at some www.masseyaero.org has a very nice machine shop filled with classic Rockford equipment. INCREDIBLE what a skilled machinist can do. I helped this guy build new engine mounts for the DC-3!! Awesome.

Matt

 

[David Conwill]

Look out!

The main problem with Old Arn (iron) is moving it which is why smaller vintage machines like my 1953 South Bend 9A sell for more then their bigger brothers.
http://oldarn.com/

Warning! Opening this site causes my McAfee virus scanner to freak out, informing me that it's attempting to load a virus and a trojan.

-Dave