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OT - the power of history

marka12161

Stainless
Joined
Dec 23, 2016
Location
Oswego, NY USA
A year ago i brought home a 1921 hendey tiebar lathe. I paid $500 for it and i was pretty happy because I got what i believed to be a decent machine at a pretty good price. I viewed the fact that it was old and obsolete as something to be tolerated. My brother (a machinist) has a friend who was wanting to get rid of it for what he paid for it. My brother had never seen anything like this thing.

And then i discovered this site...

Per Hendeyman, this machine was originally sold to a business in Batavia NY where my brother (also a local history buff) lives. This sequence of events set off a bit of a flurry of research on old machinery, local history etc by both of us.

Fast forward a year and i've acquired a kempsmith horizontal mill, buffalo forge camel back drill press and brown & sharp #2 surface grinder as well as a bunch of tooling and measuring equipment, all for a fraction of what you average golfer would spend in a year.

Over the past year my brother and i have had a lot of fun researching, comparing and discussing the features, capabilities and cost of antique machinery and perhaps most interestingly, thinking about the people that used this equipment to earn an honest living. We would not have had this fun if i had bought a modern machine.

To me, this is the power of history
 
:D

Been the great and interesting draw for me since 1964 - when I spent what little was available in the little New England used book stores in the Manchester / East Hartford area of Connecticut during the apprenticeship

Still have the results in 12 foot long ceiling high book shelves

Got to meet one living relic in the little Hartford junk store where I picked up the 13 X 5 South Bend - an 84 year old Italian gent that had run the over head cranes at Baldwin Locomotive works when he was a young man
 
Fast forward a year and i've acquired a kempsmith horizontal mill, buffalo forge camel back drill press and brown & sharp #2 surface grinder as well as a bunch of tooling and measuring equipment, all for a fraction of what you average golfer would spend in a year.

Yunno, they say rocks have a sex life - that is why there are so many of them?

Old machinery not to be outdone - at all.

We see you're well on your way to "optimal packing density."

And you haven't even contracted "Barnsitus" yet.

Joe in NH
 
It is a fact that only a tiny fraction of human history has been written and catalogued. The history of industrial metalworking is a fertile field just waiting for the inquiring individual to discover. I realize that what occurred in the capitols of the world is important, but the events and the innovations that happened in the shop, or on the construction site, intrigue me, and others. These old machines that we save from the rebar smelter are the fossils of the industrial age, and a tribute to those whose skill and imagination produced them. I consider it my privilege to be the caretaker of that technology. Regards, Clark
 
:D

Been the great and interesting draw for me since 1964 - when I spent what little was available in the little New England used book stores in the Manchester / East Hartford area of Connecticut during the apprenticeship

Still have the results in 12 foot long ceiling high book shelves

Got to meet one living relic in the little Hartford junk store where I picked up the 13 X 5 South Bend - an 84 year old Italian gent that had run the over head cranes at Baldwin Locomotive works when he was a young man

Well, that explains your encyclopedic knowledge of all these machines. YOU are THE encyclopedia!
 
It is a fact that only a tiny fraction of human history has been written and catalogued. The history of industrial metalworking is a fertile field just waiting for the inquiring individual to discover. I realize that what occurred in the capitols of the world is important, but the events and the innovations that happened in the shop, or on the construction site, intrigue me, and others. These old machines that we save from the rebar smelter are the fossils of the industrial age, and a tribute to those whose skill and imagination produced them. I consider it my privilege to be the caretaker of that technology. Regards, Clark

I agree completely. My brother tells an interesting story. One day he was machining a feature into a large heat exchanger tube sheet. It was about 12 ft or so in diameter. He needed to hold a tolerance that was unusually close for this type of work and asked one of the old timers how best to measure the diameter. The old-timer's reply was "we need to go back in time about 100 years". He went into the back room and brought out a "pi guage" (or maybe "pi wire"). Basically, they took a highly accurate measurement of the circumference of the feature, divided the measured value by pi to get the diameter. The error in the circumfrential measurement is also reduced by pi. Simple yet brilliant.
 
Yunno, they say rocks have a sex life - that is why there are so many of them?

Old machinery not to be outdone - at all.

We see you're well on your way to "optimal packing density."

And you haven't even contracted "Barnsitus" yet.

Joe in NH

It really is a disease, or at least abhorrent behavior. I'm blessed with a better half that tolerates it.
 
I agree completely. My brother tells an interesting story. One day he was machining a feature into a large heat exchanger tube sheet. It was about 12 ft or so in diameter. He needed to hold a tolerance that was unusually close for this type of work and asked one of the old timers how best to measure the diameter. The old-timer's reply was "we need to go back in time about 100 years". He went into the back room and brought out a "pi guage" (or maybe "pi wire"). Basically, they took a highly accurate measurement of the circumference of the feature, divided the measured value by pi to get the diameter. The error in the circumfrential measurement is also reduced by pi. Simple yet brilliant.

pi tape

used one a couple times almost 40 years ago

Pi Tape(R) diameter measurement tapes, diameter tape, precision diameter tapes by Pi Tape Corporation, outside diameter, linear, Go/No-Go, inside diameter, o-rings, exteneded range tapes, pipeline diameter measurement, pipeline circumference measurement, precision diameter tape, inside diameter tape, measurement tape, precision measuring tape, Pipeline diameter measurement, Pipeline circumference measurement, o ring measurement

Mike
 








 
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