I didn't like mine, it was poorly made and sat on a poorly welded stand. The thing about casting kits is that not only do two finished machines look different they also perform differently.
The Lewis was a product of it's time, designed to be built in school shops and perhaps in garages where money was exceedingly tight. People coming back from WW2 often lived in homes with dirt floors, and it sounds crazy but that was more common than we might want to think. My cousins lived like that with an outhouse in the back.
It may not even be possible for most of us to imagine the poverty that many in the USA lived under during the years the Lewis kits were offered.
For example, how many high school kids get to work on casting kits in metals shops? That was common when I was a kid. I bet there aren't 10% of schools offering it left.
I don't mean to imply that I saw it all, I was just a kid after WW2, but I know people didn't expect as much back then. The Lewis casting kits were fine for their day. I wonder how many were as nicely done as the one at the top, you can see that it was scraped, mine wasn't, nor do I think many were. But Lewis machines were all somewhat crude compared to a South Bend or even an Ammco.
These little shapers are pretty nice - I have one. There's a Yahoo group dedicated to the Lewis Machine Tool Co. machines, started long ago. There's not much activity there now, but a lot of good info and pictures. I'm one of the moderators.
