Went to an auction today

I went to an auction today that advertised machine tools. Guy seemed to be a farmer/welder/machinist living out in farm country.

The first item was an old surface grinder.

The lever is what works the table back and forth. In the background is a decent sized Leblond lathe. Bed about 10 foot or so. I thought I had another cell phone picture of it but I can't find it. Uncle wished he was younger, he was drooling over it.

The bed looked okay by eyeball, can't say much from there. Everything was a bit grimy. I have a feeling that the owner hadn't used much of this stuff for a few years so dust blowing in may have made things look worse than they were when actively used.

Then there was this universal horizontal mill. That one had my interest from the flyer before I saw it.

Yup, that is a Bridgeport head on it. A rather special one but I have a feeling he used it as a regular head. He had welded an adaptor to the ram. The horizontal tooling looked sad as in very rusty, never used.

Here is a picture from the front. My cell camera sucks.

Those that know Bridgeports know that isn't a normal head.

First cherrying head I've ever seen. BTW, that is Uncle in the picture.

The only item that had my interest is this.

It is oily nasty dirty right now. Likely grime that attacked everything out of use during the owners declining years. I hope it needs a bit of work since I want it for something to practice scraping on. I had to give 17.50 for it. Three guys wanted it. I think one wanted to make omlets over a camp fire with it ;)

There was another iron plate that really needed work but at 2' x 3' it is larger than my biggest granite. It went for 5 bucks. Uncle stayed behind and watched the bidding, I grabbed my treasure and ran to the car. I should have stayed and bid on it. I'll probably kick myself tomorrow. Oh well, I'm not greedy. I was sure the guy that was laying on it, holding it, resting on it wanted it. I guess it was just like some crappy air compressor on my side of the trailer, some place to rest an arm on.

One guy tried to tell me it was a lapping plate. I told him it is a surface plate and he told me I was wrong. Some lady that bought a mini metal lathe backed me up. Always a know it all in the crowd. The auctioneer called my plate out as an unknown machine part.

So 4 hours in the sun paid off. I'd have liked to stay to see what the machines went for. The Johnson saw likely went for the most.

Oh, I killed an hour making a hub for my lathes varidrive. Picked the wrong dimension off my print. I need glasses and need to pay attention. The dial indicator method for threading to a shoulder works great. I only had one problem. My first bunch of passes didn't seem to be getting me anywhere. Found out that the thumb wheel on the cross feed dial had worked loose. I must have made a bunch of passes w/o touching the work.

Oh well, price of learning. Overall, a pretty good day. I'm way past my sleep period.

Wes