I see that there is a strange (to me) looking Bridgeport vertical mill on Ebay right now. It is billed as something like: "Atlas 10F lathe and Bridgeport". It's item # is 330142641225 The picture shows what looks to be a Bridgeport J head or maybe the older head from a round column Bridgeport (is that the "M" head?) mounted on a square tube column which is, in turn connected to some sort of base plate upon which an X-Y table sits. So this is apparently a bench-style mill, not a knee mill. Anyway, did Bridgeport ever make such a machine or is this something that someone built up from a used J head and misc. parts? Was there some sort set of plans sometime in the past for using up surplus J heads this way? The reason I ask is that there is a company close to me that sells a lot of reconditioned Bridgeports. I went looking there one day and noticed several pallets of J heads in a rack. When I asked about them, the guy said that they don't sell any reconditioned machines with J heads; they convert them to the vari-speed type and so the J Heads just keep piling up. Not that I want to work that hard, but it seems like the head would make a good start to someone who really wanted to put the effort into making their own vertical milling machine.
Pete Stanaitis
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