Very strange day for me. I'm low on sleep, so forgive me. Up at 5am to give a guy a vintage snowblower for his collection of 32. That went well, then hit the local yard sales. Ended up with a little old Sears power hacksaw for $25.
Then went to the dump for some sightseeing. First person I saw was a friend who say "do you want a free lathe?". Turns out someone asked him if he knew anyone who could use a lathe. The fellow's moving and can't bother with it. And did I mention he lives 1/4 mile from my house?
I check out the lathe, and it's a "Davis" from around 1920, about a 13" swing with a 5' bed. In very good shape (needs repainting and I can't quite catch a fingernail on the bed wear) but completely dissasembled. It's really too big for me, but man oh man, the tooling, the tooling. Probably ten (10, one-zero) _full_ boxes of cutters, holders, bits, collets, closers, indexer, steady rest, follow rest, maybe a taper attachment, maybe a turret and milling attatchment, two five-gallon buckets of chucks and faceplates of all sizes, centers, toolposts, wrenches, a case of changegears, a jackshaft, drills, etc, etc, etc.
I mean _everything_ humanly possible to get for a lathe is included with this. So I threw caution to the wind and called my buddy with a pickup. We managed to get everything in two loads. The bed with original iron legs weighs a ton and was a hassle, but it was on casters and loaded OK with two people and ramps. A few hours later I have this monster crammed into my packed garage.
Anyway, I'll post some other threads with specific questions, but has anyone heard of this brand, and how'd I do? Need someone to confirm I didn't screw up. Metalworking tools are so uncommon around here I don't have reasonable experience.
Arggggg, need sleep and food... Oh yeah, Lennie probably gets dibs on that rough Barnes in the other town.
GTO(John)