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Machinerys Handbook

chet694

Plastic
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Feb 18, 2009
Location
ohio,usa
anyone else collet this handbook i just cant help but buy it any time i see one. i just picket up a 11th edition yesterday signed by the ME that owned it.
i just love used book stores. now i'm trying to find a origional 1st edition
 
anyone else collet this handbook i just cant help but buy it any time i see one. i just picket up a 11th edition yesterday signed by the ME that owned it.
i just love used book stores. now i'm trying to find a origional 1st edition
I have the 12th edition and the 19th edition
The 12th edition is the best the 19 does not have right info in it

Dave
 
I have about 6 or 8 different editions. Most were given to me by men that I have worked with over the years. They make a nice remembrance of those that now belong to the ages.
 
I've got three Machinery's Handbooks. It is hardly a collection, and I use each copy. There is a lot of truth to CSIP's note about " those who belong to the ages". The first Machinery's Handbook I got was the 17th edition. My parents bought it for me new, as a gift. It was required that students in the junionr & senior years of the Mechanical Course at Brooklyn Technical HS have a copy, as it was what we worked out of in Machine Design and shop courses. We also sat a two-day open book comprehensive examination on our mechanical course work to graduate. Machinery's Handbook was the "open book". My copy still has notes in the covers from those days ( 1966-68). My regret is my folks did not sign or write something to me in the cover of flyleaf. Dad has been gone 22 years, and mom at age 92 is going strong but it would seem odd some 40 years later to be asking her to write something in my Machinery's Handbook.

I've used that 17th edition ever since and used it when I sat my licensing exam as a Professional Engineer in 1977.

I've got a later edition at the powerplant, (22nd, posibly, I'm home as I type this). It was given to me by an acquaintance whose mother worked for the publishers. He repaid a favor by giving me a new Machinery's Handbook. That was in 1986. I use it often, but it has never had the same fel or familiarity that the 17th edition my folks gave me has.

A few years back, I got a used copy of the 11th edition. A friend had it in a load of used tools he was selling at a blacksmith's event and "taligate flea market". I am not sure why I bought the Machinery's Handbook, but it seemed to need a home. It turned out to have belonged to two men previously. The first man is a name in the cover. The second man was named Ray Beardsley, and there are all sorts of slips of paper- toolroom checks with calculations on them, odd slips with notes- in the pages of the book. No indication of where Mr. Beardsley worked, or the years. The 11th edition has come in handy for me on steam locomotive boiler calculations. It has data on boiler staybolt threads and staybolt taps as well as tapered threads used on studs tapped into the boilers to hold fittings or manway covers. This is data the later editions do not have. Out of respect for Mr. Beardsley, I've left the slips of paper in the Machinery's Handbook, and I never fail to wonder who he was and where he worked.

Would I get more editions of Machinery's Handbook ? Depends on price, edition, and what jumps out at me at the moment when I might find one at a sale. I've seen some offered in antique tool places and they seem to think the pages are coated with gold leaf. Being someone who uses his copies of Machinery's Handbooks fairly often, and having sufficient copies, I would say I am not a collector. OTOH, were I at a yard sale or similar and there was more of a sense of who owned the Machinery's Handbook ahead of me and connection with the previous owner (or his/her heirs), I'd be hard put NOT to buy it. I suppose the idea I was maintaining some kind of continuum would cause me to "collect" another copy or edition of "Machinery's Handbook".
 
those who belong to the ages...

My father, after my graduation from engineering school, gave me a 7th edition copy of Marks Mechanical Engineers Handbook.

He signed the inside of the cover "From one 'engineer' to another" and then continued with the usual success in your chosen career note and wished me the best of luck - and his love. Note the quotes on engineer. He never really considered himself the traditional slide rule type engineer. And yet he did quite well in his life ascending to vice president of a major generation power company here in New England.

Dad passed away in 2004. I almost dare not use the book any longer for fear I'll lose/degrade something. Not what he had in mind, I expect.

So I found another one on abebooks.com. Which I use infrequently.

Just remember - an engineer is a man who will do for one dollar, what any fool would do for two.

Joe
 
A few years ago, Industrial Press bought a surviving version 1ST edition of the machinery's handbook. The then copied every page word for word and made a replica of the book to sell. I think they are still selling it for around $50 or so.

As for collecting them, I have both of my Grandfather's handbooks, 10th and Th editions. And I tend to pick one up whenever I see them for sell.
 
I have my Grandfathers 9th and my Fathers 13th editions. Finally bought the new 28th edition, but still refer to the old ones every now and then.
 
A friend of mine used to own a used book shop. He bought a box of books from the office of a closed machine shop and called me right away. That's how I got my sixth edition; it's got several inscriptions in the front, made it's way through several hands and a trip from Long Island City, NY to here in Louisville, KY.

My Tenth edition was found in a used book store out in the boonies. My wife wouldn't let me buy the three volume set of Sewage Engineering books. (Three volumes to know it runs downhill?!)

I will snatch up almost any old technical book. They're usually inexpensive and I have a blacksmith shop full of obsolete equipment, so I need obsolete references to make it work.
 
"...shop full of obsolete equipment, so I need obsolete references to make it work."

Amen. The info in these old books is FAR more applicable to the old manual machines I operate at home and in the shop than the newer version. I think mine is a 12th... 1927. I also have the Audel's Machinist and Toolmakers Handbook. That one is great, as well.
 
I've got a 5th edition, 1919. It was given to me by one of my supervisors in the early 60's (along with a few tools) when I was an appretice. He inherited it from and uncle or some such. Inscribed inside the cover is J McKinnon, Chemainus. That's Chenainus, BC Canada I'm thinking; he was from up island.

And a 13th edition, 1946. Inscribed E Townsend. Price was $69.95

I have 2 others and a couple on disc... :)

Regards,
-Joemac
 
I have a 24th edition that I got for a Christmas bonus at one of my former jobs.
Then there is my 15th edition 1954, It was my great grandfathers, R.E. Adams.
I was given a lot of my great grandfathers tools many years after he passed away. Kind of a funny story, I went to my grandmothers and she asked me to get rid of this piece of lead she had in the closet. What do you know, it was a nice Collins Micro-Flat 12 x 18 granite surface plate of my great grandfathers. Sure glad nobody threw that out!
 
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I've got the 18th Edition of this wonderful little bedside reader, my mom picked it up for me at a used bookstore along with another good read "General Engineering Workshop Practice" which has a lot of good info on these old tools that I've gathered over the past while.

Don
 
I have a really nice third edition, 1914 For its age in lovely condition, I refer to it fairly often, About two months ago, my daughter came to visit, with my grand-daughter, and i overheard my daughter saying to her "Look at grandpas old book of data, full of tables" Strange to say my grand-daughter likes the practical workshops at school, which gives her a chance to make things, Maybe she will inherit this and other nice things i own.
 
Got mine

With all this talk of the Machinery's Handbook I just had to go to ebay. I picked up a 13th edition along with a suplament to the 13th edition called "The Use of Handbook Tables and Formulas - Based Upon Machininery's Handbook". The Handbook is signed by the owner and dated December -1947. I have to say though, while my degree is in Civil Engineering Tech/Construction Management and I remember some of these calculations & formulas, most of the content in the handbook is over my head. It will be fun learning what's in the book. By the way I won the auction & with shipping I'm out just over $13.00.
Les
 
I just received my copy of the reproduction Machinery's Handbook from IPC.

Very nice effort on their part. Appears identical to the original book EXCEPT the flyleaf where they describe who the printer is, ISBN number, etc. The rest, including the forward, seem to be as it was in the original. They have a nice white box for it. Inside the flyleaf is a loose card describing the book and their reasons for reproducing it.

And yes, the page edges are gilt and it has the page marker similar to a Bible.

The comparison is apt.

Too bad my Kennedy box doesn't have the dedicated vertical drawer sized to fit the book. Someday maybe I'll be able to afford a decent Gerstner chest.

Joe
 
I have my Grandfathers 9th and my Fathers 13th editions. Finally bought the new 28th edition, but still refer to the old ones every now and then.

I looked at my Fathers 13th edition last night and on the back cover is inprinted "Presented by the Singer Manufacturing Company". This is in the same gold ink as the info on the front cover.
 








 
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