Hello all!
I'm an aspiring hobby machinist, at the moment I don't really have much for equipment. I've wanted to find a good Bridgeport style mill for a long time, I've actively looked for around 5 years. Most everything has either been simply not quite what I wanted, wore out, or too much money. I live in Colorado, so they seem a little harder to come by than closer to coasts, and I don't do Facebook so I think that really limits my finding of more local listings.
I did find what I think is a good mill, spec'd how I want, fairly priced, and it comes with a toolbox full of the tooling which is a huge plus for me to get started. It's a 1 1/2hp Varispeed head, runs smooth, has a Servo powerfeed on the X, the table feels good and snug and doesn't tighten up at the extremes, the original flaking is there and has only very negligible wear in the center of travel. The only real issues I see is there's a fair bit of backlash in the X-axis, and there's a few broken handles and knobs that are easily replaced. My experience with them is very limited, but I did my best to give it a good inspection and feel it is the machine I have been looking for. It spent it's life doing maintenance work and prototyping, so it was not used all day everyday.
It belongs to a business that is closing up that particular location, two of the employees are handling the sale of everything that's left and struck me as fair people. It's a pretty good drive away from me, so I wanted to inspect it before dragging my gooseneck trailer and tractor all the way to get it loaded. They agreed to hold it for me with a down payment and gave me a signed receipt stating such.
Now here's where things get interesting. No shady dealings are happening, just a unexpected curve ball. One of the guys calls and says out of the blue a son of the guy that started that particular company showed up after hearing the location was closing. He was hoping to find some of his fathers tools, he found his fathers Bridgeport. Needless to say, he would like to have it back. Now, since I have a deposit on it, it is my mill to come pick up and pay in full until next week and they made that clear to me. But asked if my heart wasn't set on it if I would let it go back to the son. I would get my deposit back, plus a few hundred dollars for the time and gas money I spent to go take a look at it.
What would you guys do? To me it is just a mill, but I I'll be pretty hard pressed to find one in similar condition and specs with a nice assortment of tooling to go with it. It's not impossible, and I'm sure another will come my way someday, but who knows when. For him, it's his dads. My father is still around, but I certainly understand. I have some things from both my grandfathers and they mean a great deal to me. Together with my dad we were able to find and get back a tractor of my grandpas that was sold after his passing, so I know what it's like to get an item like that back in the family.