Added a few more goodies to my tool, equipment and general neat junk collection this last week.

Traded 5 days of labor plus fuel and personal travel expenses for a 1993 model Baykal MGS2550 100" sheet metal shears with a~3/16" x 100" or ~1/4" x 60" cutting capacity. (Weighs about 3 1/2 tons)!

Also picked up a complete and fair condition late 1930 - mid 40's Burke Machining Co #4 horizontal milling machine.

On top of that some other goodies were a
1000 gallon propane tank,
a mid 50's Heathkit FM-4 vacuum tube FM radio,
several submersible and booster pumps,
a 1" impact gun,
two refrigeration vacuum and service pump units,
a 12 volt 175 amp Iskra commercial alternator,
several commercial yard/street lights,
and a 5 gallon bucket of new bolts and fasteners ranging from tiny screws to 1" x 10" grade 8 bolts.

It was a good week.

 

OMG TCM (salivate) BUT if your collecting this much every week you must have a humongous ranch out there!

 

Go over to www.modelenginemaker.com if you need any help or advice about that milling machine.

PS. They will want to see a picture of it as well. They love the tool porn.

 

OMG TCM (salivate) BUT if your collecting this much every week you must have a humongous ranch out there!

Not weekly. Scores like this for trade for labor are a 2 -3 times a year thing at best and sometimes not even that. The guy having the big sheet metal shear machine and wanting to trade it was a total surprise on this one.

 

Go over to www.modelenginemaker.com if you need any help or advice about that milling machine.

PS. They will want to see a picture of it as well. They love the tool porn.

Yea I've been reading up on it since I brought home last week! Not an extremely rare or valuable find but a super junk yard scrap metal save to say the least!

I spent most of today building a heavy base out of old 3/4 plywood and other weathered scrap wood I have that just has the right aged look to match the vintage look of the old machine.

I have the main body casting mounted on the wood base now and most of the critical 3 axis adjustment parts loose and cleaned up too!

My main plan is to set it up as a dedicated horizontal mill for shaft keyway and slot cutting.

 

I've heard it said that the one who dies with the most toys, wins.
If you include the size of the toys, you should win, hands down.

 

My brother-in-law died a few months ago leaving a small machine shop. I would refer you to my sister, but you would probably try to get the whole shop for mowing the lawn.

 

I've heard it said that the one who dies with the most toys, wins.
If you include the size of the toys, you should win, hands down.

I like to think of it as just being well resourced of which I tend to share my resources rather freely.

Can't really do that with money being sharing that seems to be a one way street concept.

 

My brother-in-law died a few months ago leaving a small machine shop. I would refer you to my sister, but you would probably try to get the whole shop for mowing the lawn.

Actually when it comes to work for stuff trade deals I let the customer say what they feel is worth my work. If I agree I take it and rarely does anyone get cheap on dumping older surplus tools and equipment when they equate what most technicians who do what I do charge. Then wen I offer to toss in my travel and general expenses while on the job (300+ miles from home) people tend to really get generous!

 

So far today I got the old mill together and ran it for a few minutes. The old motor did work but it was really grimey so it and the attached gearbox got a full teardown and soak in a bucket of gasoline to break down the old oil slime that was all over in it.

The gearbox has a bad motor side shaft seal so it's been dumping the near crude oil lube into it for some time.

Interesting and rather uncommon motor design as well. It's a four pole four brush repulsion start and run induction motor which means it will do an instant direction reverse wit the flip of a switch!

For those who don't know what a repulsion start/run brush type motor is it's basically a induction motor stator with two sets of run windings that are always on together but to change direction one set geets it phasing reversed 180 degrees from the other which essentially shifts the position of the four stator poles one way or the other by 90 degrees.

As for the rotor its wound like a standard four pole DC motor with a brush and commutator system but all four brushes are shorted together and positioned in a way that places them right at the midpoint of the two stator run windings sets.

By being positioned at that point when one of the run winding sets phase is reversed in relation to the other the shift in the stators four relative magnetic poles switches sides in relation to which side of the rotor brushes it's on thus making it change direction because the rotors magnetic pole positions are fixed by the brush locations.

BTW this gearhead motor is only 1/2 HP but weighs around 70 pounds and the stator windings would pass for a 1+ HP by today's standards of design!

 

Do you have some sort of strategy for all this stuff? I mean, do you want to clean it and flip it, open a shop to sell time on it, rent it out, or what?

 

Do you have some sort of strategy for all this stuff? I mean, do you want to clean it and flip it, open a shop to sell time on it, rent it out, or what?

It mostly goes in my shop or depending on what it is if I already have one or more of something I just give it to people who have more need for whatever it is than I do.

Occasionally I sell stuff but for the most part anything that presents itself as having the potential to be useful to me stays here. I do a fair amount of metalworking and custom fabrication so most anything metal working or general fabrication related related gets added to my collection.

I've needed a good heavy sheet metal sheers for a long time and same with a basic horizontal mill that can cut keyways and slots. I have a commercial plasma cutter but doing a lot of accurate sheet cutting gets time consuming plus although I have a good Smithy lathe mill combo rig doing keyways and general slotting work with it is not all that easy given most everything for the lathe work tooling had to come off it to switch it over to work with the vertical mill head and even then the overall work area is pretty limiting unless I remove the lathe chuck and tailstock to do larger or long item work.

 

when they equate what most technicians who do what I do charge.

Problems: There is not much work available on a non-functional farm owned by a 70 year old widow, and Kentucky is a lot more than 300 miles from North Dakota. A couple of mills and a lathe are going to have to find homes closer than yours.

It's those OMG number of cutting tips that boggle my mind.
What does one do with several thousand cutting tools?

 

It's those OMG number of cutting tips that boggle my mind.
What does one do with several thousand cutting tools?

Unfortunately if they are not new in the box and never been opened they are worth tool steel and carbide scrap price regardelss of condition which is at best a few dollars a pound.

Also even if new in the box and never been opened they are at best worth about 1/10th to 1/4 new value. The depreciation on that sort of consumables once they leave the manufacture is nuts.

A few years ago I picked up over a $1000 worth of brand new carbide rotary slot/keyway cutters for $50 on eBay. I never had a machine to run them on but for the price I knew they could wait until I got one and now I have one! !

 

if they are not new in the box and never been opened they are worth tool steel and carbide scrap price

That's what I was afraid of.
Not worth the price of shipping them to a buyer.

 

I want some cool toys too! Man I'm jealous.

 

On top of that some other goodies were a
1000 gallon propane tank,
a mid 50's Heathkit FM-4 vacuum tube FM radio,
several submersible and booster pumps,
a 1" impact gun,
two refrigeration vacuum and service pump units,
a 12 volt 175 amp Iskra commercial alternator,
several commercial yard/street lights,
and a 5 gallon bucket of new bolts and fasteners ranging from tiny screws to 1" x 10" grade 8 bolts....

...two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

 

Well after helping plant some 100+ assorted pine trees today I did manage to get the old mill gear motor torn down so I could clean it and replace the bad shaft seals.

Even made a trip to town and got some new ones for less than $10. Down side was the old seals were nothing that any common seal of today came close to matching so I had to go with what was close and then do some creative modifying to make them fit right.
The motor side shaft replacement seal was close enough that with a bit of rim bending it worked but the output shaft seal required that the original seal assy be remachined to work as a combination seal backing plate and main bearing shim and even at that the seal needed a good JB weld build up to make sure it stayed put and wouldn't leak around the outside given it had a ~-.020" negative fit issue. Fortunately given the gearbox face design, to look at that shaft and new seal now you would never know it's not the original one.

Also while it was apart the motor stator and rotor winding got a new enamel coating and the rotor commutator got a good polish too to get rid of the old oxidation and carbon build up.

I'm hoping after a good night of the enamel drying that it will work like new again tomorrow. If not I will probably rewind it some rainy day.

 

I want some cool toys too! Man I'm jealous.

You can come play in my sandbox any time if you can overlook the mess.

 

That's what I was afraid of.
Not worth the price of shipping them to a buyer.

They are worth something but yea I know the sickening feeling of finding out how some high dollar parts end up not being worth anything later.

My buddies I did the work for that I got all of this stuff from have done a number of machine and fabrication shop fire salvage jobs over the years and have litteral crates with tons of assorted tooling I pick through from time to time.

Downside is so much of it is either specialty tooling or large high production stuff that it's of near no use to anyone being none of it will fit any common person's home shop or hobby level machines.

As cool as a 2" dia 16" long drill bit is (several hundred dollars new) absolutely no one would have any sort of drill press that could power it. And yes, they do in fact have such a drill press as a salvage machine that would use it but it's a ~ 3 - 4 ton radial arm type monster.

Similar to the Garleton unit pictured here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drill