OK, ladies and gents, it's Friday and time for something lighthearted.
Does anyone have any great stories of finding Antique Machinery or Tools in a junk pile?
This is inspired by Northernsinger's tale of finding a post vise in a scrap heap.

John Ruth

John I can't think of much right now..... so how about a dog in a bin of wigs at a flea market in Amsterdam?

I have 3 nice dial indicators found in the dumpster by a fella we call "road kill".He is a shift worker and when things are quiet he checks the dumpsters.I have crowned e couple of muzzles for him,so he looks for things that would interest me.

Thoroughly decrepit Sunnen "LB" type hone head in Navigation Blvd. (Houston) scrap yard 1973 - $10 - rebuilt with hand bent "chip pan" as one of Jess Briley's first pieces of production equipment. This was strictly a back yard effort with a "store bought" gear motor.

Here is what Briley grew into.

Briley Manufacturing, shotgun choke manufacturer and gunsmithing

I think Jesse is 82 now. In those days, he was just a fellow tool engineer in Houston at Reed Tool. One of the only guys I ever knew whose house came "stock" with three phase.

John Oder

Ive found a treasure in a junk pile plenty...then again...I treasure a lot of things so maybe not necessarily treasure was what I found. My favorite machinery related experiences:

1. The Buffalo 10" benchtop camelback drill press I found half submerged in the mud of a shed on a farm my brother bought.

2. After seeing a thread on here about a homemade Sjorgen and thinking I had to have or make one, I went to an estate auction kinda out in the sticks. Auction began with most inside drooling over imported tooling and the auctioneer outside selling piles of scrap. I got upset over the people/space ratio inside so wandered out to watch the scrap sell. The first pile was crusty old rims and tires with a few other "roundish" objects mixed in. One happened to be a 5C Sjorgen that was sitting on top. I gave up $6 for that and then $10 about 5 mins later for an 8" B&S milling vise that was propping open the door to the shop. 10 mins later the prices paid for used Harbor Freight tools were exceeding the new prices so I left happy I decided to follow the auctioneer closely. Now I do it everytime.

My story is about the "Excelsior" drill press. It's similar to those WPI drill presses except it says "EXCELSIOR" on the bottom trumpet and is painted gray.

I paid $15 for the Excelsior from a local machine tool dealer. It needed work - and parts - to make it right. It had been adapted to an electric motor drive and even the motor was burned out - hence the low price. Missing lots of flat belt pulleys and shafts. But I'm a sucker in these matters and I could see a challenge - and some pleasure in it's solution.

Stripping off the modifications, I got back to the basic drill press elements. I needed two right angle belt drive pulleys. My friend in Manchester, NH offered up a couple of cast iron dolly wheels about the right size and thickness. Some brass bushes and a shaft turned on my lathe put that to right.

Gee, that was easy.

Hmm. Now what about that three, no four (two the same diameter) step pulley on the backside? I had my WPI drill press to use as a model, of course.

4" x 4" block of maple said make me into a pulley. I even bought a long brass bush to line the maple pulley and make a proper bearing surface. About to start on this part of the venture I decided to take in the Dublin, NH Gas & Steam Engine Show. (usually held in September)

The Dublin show besides being a show is also a flea market of things mechanical. While touring the vendors I see on the ground a nice single base overhead shaft hanger with step pulley I might use for either the WPI or Excelsior drill presses. I ALWAYS look for shaft hangers. And pulleys are always desirable too. Sometimes the hardest part of restoring a machine is getting the proper shaft hangers & pulleys.

Holding it up, "What's this from?" I ask the vendor.

"Old Drill Press - my dad converted it to an electric motor and these things have been sitting around." (Do I detect an irony here? I'm getting excited!)

"Is it for sale?"

"Nope - I want the tight & loose pulleys offen it."

"If you remove the pulleys will you sell me the rest of it?"

"Sure - $10 and it'll be your piece of junk."

I couldn't get the money out fast enough.

Deal settled I asked about any other machine items.

"I got some more stuff you're free to look over" he says as he pulls up a heavy box.

I look in the box and there - right there - RIGHT THERE - is the pulley his dad removed from the drill press so many years before. The spittin image of the pulley on the WPI drill press. My heart was beating wildly - no! NO! I think to myself. Nope. This is business. Gotta stay cool. If you act excited, he'll raise the price.

"Umm - how much for this old pulley?"

He could have said $100 right then and I would have willingly paid it.

"Sheesh, I don't even know what that goes to - you can have it."

He didn't know - but I did! I coulda given that old codger a kiss right then and there.

He can have his stoopid tight & loose pulleys. Those I got plenty of.

Moral of the story? Look in those boxes. You may find the piece you're REALLY looking for in there.

I still have my 4x4 block of maple - and the bush.

Joe

K&T 3CH milling machine found in a scrap yard in Bainbridge,Ga.Rebuilt and eventually traded to Forrest Silas.K&T 1H universal/horizontal given to me by Mike Danford.In sad shape but evenually restored and has served me well.Now in need of a feed clutch replacement and crossfeed bracket rebuild.2HL bought off eBay from a guy in Canada,Was in great shape until dropped during loading.Restored and my main milling machine at this point in time.There's a better story behind each one of these machines but space limitations apply.I think I enjoy rebuilding/restoring more than running them.

I was at a Civil War Re-enactment once and at one of the sutlers was a table of tools with a sign- $2 each Mostly there were rusty awls and wooden handled screwdrivers but a 24" folding ruler caught my eye and I paid for it fast without looking closely. Closer inspection revealed it to be a Stephen's and Co ivory rule bound in German silver. Very nice indeed.

Todd

Too easy, John, I have lots of these stories. Here's one.

I always have scrounged at dumps, all kinds of stuff. One day up in the little town--a Saturday morning, the only time the dump is open during the nearly forty years I've been going there--I find two mirror matching pieces of rusty, curved, fairly heavy sheet metal pieces, torch cut. And know exactly what they were--the two ends of a Ford tractor snow blade, a kind of a distinctive curve and size--so decide to 'take them home' as 'they'll be good for something.'

But I never used them, for ten years or more.

Then, one day I'm chatting with my old friend Jeremy P, at his place, about a mile from where I then lived, and talking about our snow removal equipment. Jeremy tells me he is still using a blade on his Kubota tractor but that he is irritated that, when he got the little tractor he didn't think it would push the blade he had so he cut off the ends and now--and for a number of years, he tells me--he has wished he hadn't.

'Was it a Ford tractor blade, Jeremy?' I asked. 'Yeah,' said, in a puzzled tone as if surprised I knew, 'How do you know?' 'Wait here' I said, I'll be right back.'

In those days I still had a good memory for where all the stuff was, so it didn't take me five minutes at home to find the plow end pieces he'd burnt off ten years prior I'd had since the week he'd cut them off. I gathered them up and presented them to him.

No charge.

The look on his face had to be priceless.

In 1971 I was 14 years old. My dad got to know a guy that had a small scrap yard and he knew my dad was a machinist and was always looking for steel bar stock for his home shop. The scrap yard owner called my dad and said that he took in a machine for scrap that was part of an insurance deal from a building that had been on fire. It looked like some kind of a lathe with a big chuck and he wondered if my dad was interested in it. My dad didn't have high expectations about a machine that may have been in a fire but thought the chuck might be salvageable so we went to look at it. I remember seeing this big old greasy gray/black machine tilted over against a big pile of steel scrap. It was a conehead lathe that appeared to be in very condition. Nothing was broken and it was complete. So my dad bought it for scrap price, $130. We had it winched to the back of a big tow truck for the 3 mile journey home.

When we got it home and started to tear it down, we found that it was in excellent condition with virtually no wear. It was a 20" Flather. The fire had never touched it. It was scrapped with other stuff in the burnt building as part of the insurance claim. The lathe is the heaviest made machine I have ever seen. It works perfectly. Very heavy duty. Iron must have been cheap back in the early 1900's. It was my dads prize machine as it will be my prize machine also. I will be bringing it to my place soon as dad passed away just last January 21st at 82.

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I expect his opinion of you (whatever it is) was dramatically confirmed!

It's nice when character becomes "you." Ed Battison had "it." I've been striving for that pinnacle of personality condition for some years now. Relationships with other people become a lot easier since they always know what they're up against.

Joe

Steammachine:

Oh! Ivory & German Silver! I'm sure that made you happy!

Northernsinger,

I'll bet you could have knocked your friend Jeremy over with a feather at that moment ! That's gotta be one of the best I've ever heard of.

Billygoat,

It's time to give that old gal another coat of Sea Foam Green. (Never mind if that was the "original" color - it's the color she has always been since your family has owned her, so it's the color you expect to see her in.)

I've had a couple of good ones out of junk piles and a couple of near-misses that made it obvious why the item was in the junk pile to begin with.

My father passed along a Craftsman (obviously made by Palmgren) X-Y-Rotary table that a friend of his found in a dump.

I've found a Bluepoint (Snap-On secondary brand) toolbox in the trash. Just needed to be cleaned. Also have a nice Waterloo box from the trash.

Once found a walnut tabletop drawer chest, missing one drawer, in a curbside pile on trash day in my then-wife's hometown. She said "John! You can't just take things out of people's trash!" I just chuckled......she was in a state of shock and in fear of embarrassment if anybody saw me doing it. I could not understand this then and still don't understand what the big deal was. Maybe it's part of the reason that she's now my ex-wife. Anyway, the chest is somewhat of a mystery, although one expert told me it's an ancient store fixture for dispensing hanks of embroidery floss. Drawers are perfect for long narrow stuff like drills & taps.

Then there was the Columbian vise with the pretzelled handle......turned out that the internal Acme nut was entirely missing. Gave that one to a machinist friend with more experience single-pointing internal Acmes.

ALWAYS look in the boxes of rusty junk under the front of the flea market vendors tables. There, among the curtain rod hardware, discarded electrical and plumbing sundries, under the cheap imported tools, may lie a negelcted gem or two.

John Ruth

IN the early 1980's my dad, who always worked in the oilfields, was overseeing the building and outfitting of an offshore rig on the Houston shipchannel- a rig like this is built like a ship, and launched as it gets built. One day he was going around doing some inspecting of the base of the rig, which was sitting in a muddy area, and stepped on something. He reached into the approximately 6 inches of mud and pulled out an industrial Black and Decker electric drill, this was back in the day when that meant something. Someone working on the superstructure of the rig had dropped it, and didn't even bother looking for it, assuming it was gone forever. My Dad brought it home and gave it to me. I cleaned it up and replaced the rusted Jacobs chuck with a new one.
I still have that drill, it still works great. Bill S

When I was a public servant, part of my job in our small village was inspecting buildings prior to demolition to ensure that proper safety measures would be used. An old garage that was once the first auto repair shop here was scheduled to come down by the owner. Inside was a Seneca Falls lathe along with its original counter shaft, ancient motor and gear cutting attachments. It was covered with a great dirt/oil layer that had shielded it from rust for at least 50 years. The owner's son who was a member of my volunteer fire company said everything goes, so if I wanted it, I should take it. No further words were necessary.

I found an old drill press that has the pull down handel instead of the wheel gear pulldown.It's veeery old looking can anyone tell me what brand it is...if I can get the pics to post???C:\Users\Sherry\Pictures\Drill press

I'm constsntly eyeing the side of the road for a "gift"
One night I see a reflection of light bouce from the edge of a group of plastic gabage cans.
It was a 10" Bosch compond miter saw(sliding head)
It needed a blade arbor washer, other wise it has been my shop crate building saw for the last 3 years
My daughters have given up on trying to talk me out of stopping when I see a potential prize.

I was at a gun show and saw a nice dovetailed box under a guy's booth. I started to inspect it and realized it was full of mics...

However, upon further investigation, I realized that these were Carl Zeiss Mics. The guy said they belonged to his father and would sell them for $80... I couldn't run faster to the ATM machine.

I had no idea Zeiss made micrometers and even the Carl Zeiss guys at WESTEC were surprised.

When I was 55 I took a job driving a cement truck as a retirement job. One Friday evening our mechanic said Joe the manager of the gravel pit had come down that afternoon and asked if anybody wanted a metal building for taking it down. I jumped in my truck and run up to the scale house. I asked Joe if the building was still available. He said it was and I could have it if it was gone when he come to work Monday. I said I wanted to take a look at how it was made. It was in 6 sections with a total length of 80' & 28' wide. Every other section had all the frame work and could be left together. A contractor friend had a sizzor lift truck, so I called Bruce and asked if I could use his truck for the week end. I went back in and told Joe, I could do it. I hired two of my coworkers and got permission to use the Michigan loader. We backed the sizzor truck in under a section, torched the main posts off at 8' one guy spent the day knocking the clips out of the siding. The section was loose I would lift the bed a foot or so and take it 4 mile to my house, drop it off and go back for another. By afternoon Sunday that slab was picked like a chicken. That is my work shop now 40' X 28' and another building back in the field 27' X 28'. I knew when I put them up a new roof was going to be needed to go over the original. About a year after I was a couple mile from the house and saw a huge header trailer with used commercial roofing in 30' lengths for sale. I roofed both my buildings including a 16' awning down one side of the workshop and sold what was left for $25 more than I paid to start with. I would have the guys dump their left over concrete in my truck and bring it home and poured all my footers floors aprons free of charge. I am going to try to paint it this year. I am going to buy real paint. Kenny

Woodymyster:

That has GOT to be the topper ! It's not quite found in a "junk pile" but I guess it is pretty close.

The key phrase is "under a guy's booth" !!! Vendors put the stuff they think is valuable up top on the table, and the stuff they think is lower in value underneath. It's just commonsense, really.

So, the place where you are going to find something good at a lower price is down under the front of the table, where there will be a "box of rust" that you NEED to look through!

Like the "DB&S" (Darling, Brown & Sharpe) engraved scale I found in the "25 cents each" box. Seller had no idea what DB&S meant. Actually, I thought it was amazing to find a good scale of any make in the 25 cent box!

Flea Market season is upon us. Unfortunately, I plan to move this year so I can't fully participate in the bargain hunting!

And keep an eye out on those Spring Cleaning junk pickup days - this is when you'll find the great stuff !