Help Finding An Antique/Vintage Lathe Near Detroit

[TDegenhart]

Of the three lathes, I would vote for the Leblond. It is a reasonably sized lathe for what you want to do. Reasonably priced. Close to home. One of the costs acquiring a machine of this size is transportation. If you have to use commercial services, they can easily cost as much as the machine. Three factors. Loading the machine, can the seller do that and at what cost, moving from the seller to your place and unloading/positioning. These are heavy and top heavy machines that can be easily be tipped over if you don't know what your doing.

Looking through some of the photos, the ways of the Leblond appear to be in good to excellent condition, but of course that needs to verified with a visit. One item that is very positive that the Hendy doesn't have is high speed, up to 1800 rpm per specs from Tony's web site. The machine advertised is the Mk 1. See Tony's write up.

LeBlond Dual Drive Lathe

Tom

 

[JohnEvans]

If you want to make things buy the Le Blond ! If you want a long term project get the 10EE. A few years ago a local dealer had a VFD repowered 10EE and he had a hard time selling it. With the conversion it lost about half of it's top speed and some other features,and high speed IS one of the things 10EE's do. I have 2 12" lathes with a max of 2000 RPM and even with 1/4" material I almost never go over 1500 or so. DO Not pay for it ,if you buy the 10EE, until after it is loaded !! The usual cherry picker ain't up to lifting a 10EE.

 

[TomBoctou]

The seller and I have agreed on what I believe is a fair price for both of us on the 10EE. Now all I need to do is figure out how I'm going to get it home to Detroit from Chicago. I have a Silverado so trying to work out what options are available to me. Hopefully I can rent some sort of trailer that my truck can handle and that can handle the weight of the lathe. The seller says he has a cherry picker and some other stuff to help me get it onto the trailer. If anyone has any advice here it would be greatly appreciated.

If at all possible, hire a tilt-back car carrier to move it for you. Driving is easy, even with a trailer that's carrying 4x the weight the truck is rated for. Moving the lathe on flat ground is easy - get a bunch of 1-1.5" black iron pipe from Home Despot and roll it, slowly. Getting the lathe on and off a trailer is tricky and risky - it can harder than it sounds to get out of the way of a machine if it starts to tip. Most important is don't rush and have buckets of ratchet straps on hand.

I've heard of people who have gotten good deals from tow truck drivers by asking them if they can make off with the company truck on a weekend, but it's never worked for me.

 

[adammil1]

Have you looked at the Toolmaster yet? I got one and they are great machines far more rigid and better in my opinion than a Bridgeport. The weak point on that one though are the collects. If you are lucky like I got with mine and the photo seems to show that is a 1D model it should hopefully have the collets sitting in a 40 taper chuck. If that is the case parted out or sold as a set they should at least get you enough money if not more to get more modern ER-40 and a 40 taper holder. That's what I did with mine. If you are stuck with the Cincinnati Monoset collets which are the proprietary ones they used beware they are fragile especially the bigger sizes. I think I split my 1" right open when using a slightly under sized home made or Chinese fly cutter. I eventually found a guy who I saw bought a used monoset grinder on Ebay with no collets. This was back in the day when Ebay let you email anyone. I informed him that I had the collets he needed and told him I would be happy to sell for the price of a buy it now set of ER-40s with collet chuck. It worked out great for both of us as it was his shop wasn't too far away so we did the trade in person and he was quite relieved to see my set of collets fit the machine he just bought. I think even 15yrs ago the only guy who had replacements who knew what they were was David Sobel and he got over $100ea for the replacements. Other than that though I would highly recommend the Toolmaster. I recall seeing them sell for $500ea at the industrial surplus (the old dealer here in ct that specialized in everything Cincinnati) and wished I had room just because they are such great machines that didn't deserve to sell so low.

On the other hand for how much industry Detroit used to/still has I am surprised there are such few options at such high prices compared to the east coast.

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[DaveKamp]

I'm baffled how anyone would look at THIS 10EE and question the reliability of it's drive...

It has none... it has a VFD in a box, and a conversion motor sitting on a plate.

It needs someone to mount the motor to the plate, install the sheave, put belt on the sheave, connect 3 motor wires, 3 potentiometer wires, and three direction-control wires to the headstock switch, and an on-off switch... or if it was me, mount the VFD in the cavity behind the motor, and do the same, include a contactor and pushbutton start/stop control to power the VFD from single-phase.

Speed range? MY FOOT! My 10EE's drive motor is an 1800rpm Allis-Chalmers, driving the spindle with a Gates Polychain 3:1 reduction, and the VFD is set to somewhere around 130hz. It will go from stop, to 2500rpm, and back to stop, in an instant, at low speed it yields enough spindle torque that if it took my sleeve, it'd wrap me in and turn me into a wad of jelly in 5 rotations... so I've got a couple emergency switches to stop it pronto.

Mechanicals and wear? Doubt there's any, and if so, it wouldn't make a grand difference.

My 10EE is perpendicular to the left side wall of my 24x24 attached garage... and it only sticks out about 5ft. I have it on a fabricated steel base that properly supports it (3 point contact!) and allows me to EASILY move it around with a pallet jack, and when not using the jack, I stow it under the machine. The base also elevates the machine to get it out of 'crouching' position for me.

Without the original M-G drive (mine is a '42 round dial), mine weighed something like 2483.25lbs... hefty, but certainly not 5000. The motor I used for my conversion was 168lbs, the transformer 120lbs, and the VFD unit 17lbs. It's no problem for the concrete.

ANY lathe is better than NO lathe. At $2500, that Monarch will NOT be a source of regret. I also have a 17x72 Sidney and a 24x180 Lodge and Shipley, a Rivett 715 2nd op lathe, and have had several South Bends, and a Cinci Traytop 13... while the other two have their advantages... they're not in the same league as the 10EE. The only thing close, is the Hendey, and yes, IT is HEAVY.

The most realistic answer is: you're gonna be getting another shop soon... wether you believe it, or not...

 

[stevewatr]

Have I got a deal for you!!

Oh wait, you said 1940's to 1960's??

Oh well, I was hoping to find a loving home for my 1916 Vernon. (Lol)

It's in Massachusetts, but it travels well <gr>

Steve.

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