1943 K&T 4H Acquired from Scraper in Houston

Howdy,

Recently this mill , K&T 4H plain Serial 59-4230, was on Craigslist in south Houston, (maybe someone here stumbled across it) then ad expired. I Never got a response from the seller for over a month. Until late last week. He called me back finally and said it was not under power when he was listing it and sold to a small time scrap guy out of Baytown area. Original seller gave me said scraper’s number. He still had it on his place when I called and was about to strip it down if it’s various raw materials. With some desperation, I convinced him to cease any disassembly and sell it to me. $130 a ton he reckoned.

I drive out to Baytown and he gets it on his scales.scale says 5462 lbs. paid the man his $355. He said it had a milk crate full of drill bits with it that he had already sent to the melter before I got there, upon further questioning and his descriptions, it was a box full of the arbors, damn. State regulators must’ve missed his weights and measures inspection because behind the F550 on the way home it felt like my 8500lb skid steer more or less. Lo and behold book says 7850.

Got it back home and unloaded it, in precarious fashion, and rolled it into part of my shop where I tear into stuff.

Old Westinghouse 440 motor blown. Tore it apart and find 2 of 12 stators completely burnt up. Shoehorned a 7.5 hp Baldor in that motor cavity and changed all its fluids as the sumps were full of diesel or kerosene and cleaned it up of surface rust. Freed over arms with 20ton hyd jack and a fixture.

Fired it up on the bootleg 7.5hp and ran it through it’s speeds and feeds. Completely functional except for the rapids. Gibs pretty much out of any adjustment but it’s tight. Tore the column down and the guts of the column clutch were gone. As if purposefully removed. Made a column clutch bypass out of some hardened materials from a John Deere combine transmission. Looks cobbled. Works well. Had to Nirod one of the overram supports due to hairline crack on bore.

Will attempt to attach pics of a few unknown accessories it came with and general pics of the mill before and after as well as clutch bypass.

Lurking for a while,

Joe

329 line items here

Kearney & Trecker Co. - Publication Reprints | VintageMachinery.org

Line 2 has parts book. Further down in July of 2016 is manual

Good deal thank you I have two old flat belt Cincinnati’s but this is a much more refined beast.

Any idea what this thing is? It painted the same as the machine and it was tucked away, loose, in the motor compartment.

Column clutch bypass

My successful attempt to get rapids to work due to disabled column clutch. It’s ball bearings and springs were missing upon teardown

Always some were back east, you will never find a K&T in the scrap yards of the north west side of these united states.
Even K&T's that have been through a fire still bring a grand. Luckily you. enjoy your new machine.