Got a Good Story About Buying a Lathe?

Thirty five years ago I tried to buy a second-hand Myford. It was advertised in Exchange and Mart as in good condition and running. I rang the man and arranged to go and see the lathe, borrowing Dad's car for the day - it had a big boot.

I drove 100 miles in the rain to Birmingham and got lost. No SatNavs back then. Eventually I found the contact address which turned out to be in a street of large terraced Victorian houses, once posh, now very run down. The door bell didn't work and I had to bang the door hard with my fist. Eventually the door was opened by a granny in a hair net and dirty pinny. Before I could say anything, she said 'round the back' and shut the door in my face.

'Round the back' I found that the houses had once had huge rear gardens now filled with a maze of tatty sheds housing various businesses. My destination turned out to be a seedy car-breaker cum scrapyard. No one about.

In one of the sheds I found a chap who I shall call 'Surly Bloke'. The man I'd made the appointment with was 'out', not expected back, and Surly Bloke knew nothing about Myfords. After a bit of prompting, he reluctantly showed me a heavily built lathe behind one of the sheds. Partly covered by a torn tarpaulin, it was very rusty, sat in a puddle, and had collected a fair quantity of bird poo. There was no motor, it was over six foot long, had no obvious maker's name, and there was obvious damage. It wasn't a Myford and no way would it fit in my car even if I'd wanted it. The only thing that matched the Exchange and Mart Advert was the asking price.

Driving home I had a puncture on the motorway. It was dark, raining hard and I had no torch. I changed the wheel by feel and got home late, dirty and exhausted. Wifey was annoyed because I'd gone missing, Dad was not pleased about his tyre and I was peeved.

I'm not sure there ever was a Myford. Possibly they had sold it to someone else and the whole Surly Bloke experience was intended to cover their embarrassment. In the end I didn't buy any kind of lathe until just before I retired.

This contrasts sharply with a friend of my Dad's. He went to an auction at a government Depot and paid £10 for a Boxford in as new condition, fully tooled except for one missing change wheel.

Ho hum. If life was fair Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

Anyone else had interesting experiences buying second-hand?

Dave

.

Yes.

Bought both my mill and lathe blind on ebay and got the seller to strap them to a pallet and send them.

Both exceeded my expectations on condition stated and price paid. .......... Perhaps I was just lucky on both occasions.

Nick

My experience was very different.

For years had hankered after lathe, and had even heard of Myford.

Visiting a friend who rana small engineering business, he had a ML7 on a stand. When I ogled it he said "As long as you don't take the stand, you can have it for what I paid for it" What joy! But I had left my cheque book at home, but my lovely wife "I've got mine". And so it was that shortly afterwards the ML7 was loaded into the car (fortunately a hatchback) He gave me a parting tool holder, c/w blade (Which is still being used many years later).

That lathe came with a set of change gears, 3 and 4 jaw chucks and a Faceplate. But this merely started me on the road to financial ruin. Over the years accessories (steadies long cross slide, 4 way tool post, a 127T gear and Rodney milling attachment. It did many jobs, and provided many many hours of pleasure and usefulness, but the 2MT Mandrel was a restriction, and so eventually it was sold to a colleague at work, and replaced by an Engineers Tool Room BL12-24 with a three phase motor and inverter drive fitted by the importer..

Again, this has provided many hours of pleasure and enabled me to make / repair / modify / improve all manner of items.

So these two lathe purchases have been happy ones.

Howard

My Dad gave me a pile of MEs from the 40s and 50s that he had been given (I think by my uncle, but I'm, not sure).

I took them on holiday to Devon and spent most of the week devouring them.

As a teenager I had been fascinated by the idea of a lathe (without knowing a great deal about them) but put off and encouraged towards electronics and model boats, railways etc... probably because they thought I would rip my arm off with one (good job they never figured out how risky my adventures with mains electricity and pyrotechnics were).

The holiday reawakened my interest. I counted my pennies and even a second hand Myford appeared unlikely. In Machine Mart I found a returned and apparently unused mini-lathe for a knock-down price by coincidence and accidentally bought it. I already had boxed off part of the dining room/kitchen as a 6x7 workshop so it moved in, followed rapidly by a bench drill.

The rest, as they say, is history, or if not history, farce...

Neil

The father of a friend at university set up a company just after WW2 to make mining equipment. He decided he needed some trucks so rocked up at a government surplus auction to bid for a few lorries. He won the bidding, and when he went to collect the lorries found they were loaded with machine tools - just the job to fit out his first factory!

Nothing exciting but:

About 30 years ago I managed to get my hands on an old Colchester Master lathe from either Exchange and Mart or Loot, cant remember which. Chuck wise it it was well equiped and the lathe in more than acceptable condition.

As with many quite a few lathes about then, practically all the change wheels had vanished and no steadies.

It took me about 6 months of continually rumaging around in scrap yards trying to build up a full set of the correct DP wheels to eventually build a full set, several being modified by bushing or boring etc. Alternative steadies were sourced, reworked or adapted to suit.

I dont know if this was just was an excuse to rumage and nosey round but it was always so satisfying as usually something else was bought when leaving. Nobody seemed to bother when you explained the mission you were on, you just got a free hand to roam at will. At the time there was a lot bigger choice of yards about, a lot more machine tools, textile machinery, printing equipment, engines etc being scrapped off.

No chance now with H & S controls, plus scrap yards just Ebay some of what comes thru'. I miss that ability to roam free in them for bits. Dont think I have enjoyed equiping a lathe as much since.

years ago I bought a big American Star lathe from a closing down brewery . I "borrowed " a fork truck form work and removed the bed from the legs and loaded it onto mycar trailer . On the way home I noticed that the view in the mirror was changing . On stopping I saw that the lathe was slipping off the back . It was much too heavy to lift back on but luckily there was a tree on the road side . I reversed into it and pushed the load back onto the trailer and drove slowly home . I often wondered what I would have done if it had come right off !!! Served me for quite a while , I found it was made about 1910 but it had some good features .

Phil

Took the kids to Weston-super-Mud once and roadworks made leaving town a slow business. Just past a hump backed bridge on the outskirts we were highly entertained to find a red-faced chap shovelling sand out of a bent row boat on a crushed trailer, it's wheels splayed like in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Presumably the cheapscate had filled his boat with sand not realising how much it would weigh in total: much too much for his trailer.

A painfully expensive mistake and being laughed at by everyone in a long queue of slowly moving traffic must have completely made his day!

Dave

Not a lathe but a bandsaw.

Back in the 1970s, I saw an advert in Exchange and Mart for the bandsaw attachment for the Myford ML8 wood lathe. This was/is a quality bit of kit that usually fitted outboard of the ML8 head-stock, the lower wheel fitting onto the lathe mandrel extension. Myford made a gizmo that reproduced all the relevant aspects of the bandsaw to lathe interface that allowed the saw to be used apart from the lathe.

I was working in Ilford, Essex, and the advertiser was in Hampton, Middlesex. I phoned him (used the Company phone, not strictly permitted!) and expressed my interest and the advertiser agreed to sell to me. I crept out of work a bit early (also pushing my luck) and scurried to the local Central Line station. Then transferred to the 'overground', can't remember the exact route. It was December, cold and dark, and every time the train stopped, lots of slushy snow came in through the train doors. I arrived at Hampton and then had to find the seller's address. It turned out to be a flat above a shop. My knock at the door was answered by a woman, obviously embarrassed, who told me that the bandsaw attachment had been sold to someone else! Her husband refused to come downstairs to talk to me.

I'm really not the spiteful type but I bet he was feeling painful spasms in various sensitive parts of his anatomy during my journey home!

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

I was very fortunate when buying a lathe and milling machine from places I worked at.

The first was the lathe as I had outgrown the Myford M type which had served my well.

I learned that a lathe in the tool room was to be thrown out because the clutch was worn out so one lunchtime went to have a look. The lathe was made in 1946, the same as me and fortunately a friend of mine worked there. The lathe was a Henry Milnes, 6 1/2 inch with a removable gap allowing 21 inches, just right for the 3" Marshall 'S' type that I fancied. It had a screwcutting gearbox, coolant and was 3 ph.

The clutchplates were ​ submerged in oil and were operated by a Maxim toggle that had been repeatedly adjusted by the maintenance dept. so that now the clutch would not stay engaged.

I bought it for the scrap value of £100 and had to dismantle it to get it home!. Once the Maxim toggle was loosened it worked perfectly for many years.

Them milling machine was much the same. It had been bought by the company to mill serrated plates used on the Harrier jump jet and when that job stopped, the machine had to go.

The machine was horizontal and vertical with power feed on all three axis and a non-working digital readout.

As it happened the company had an avionics department so I asked one of the inspectors if he could have a look at it for me. He was back minutes later to say that the fault was a 3p resistor that had burnt out and he had replaced it with the result that everything now worked. It cost £100 to buy the 5 ton machine and another £100 to get it moved.

Sadly, I had to downsize a few years ago because chucks and vices were becoming too heavy to lift. I now have a Boxford 'A' and a bench miller.

Brian

Edited By Brian Hutchings on 03/06/2017 18:34:02

A few years ago now I bought an old horizontal mill from a blind model engineer near Taunton. On answering the door he hot footed off to his very crowded workshop with me following. After banging my knees on several things I had to sheepishly ask if he could turn the lights on so I could see where I was going.

Edited By Durhambuilder on 03/06/2017 21:27:04

I had a guy lift my Smart&Brown with a forklift into the back of my old van .. which made it sit down and creak somewhat.. They're heavy ! Coming back home from Chatham to Maidstone , down Bluebell hill ,at a fair lick , I had an awful job to slow down at the bottom with brake fade ....

Not a lathe but a Milling machine. My mate up the road had just acquired a Bridgeport and having used it for a couple of jobs I decided - I want one of those. Having searched for a while and not found a Bridgeport I saw a Ajax AJT4 advertised locally, so after a quick chat with said mate to make sure we could transport it, I made contact with the seller and was invited over to view the machine. It had belonged to a professional engineer who had brought it home after closing up his business and since passed away. After agreeing on an initial price including tooling worth twice the asking price of the mill alone, the seller informed me that there were a couple of machines in a shed at the bottom of the garden that I might also be interested in. On inspection, I found a Studer OB cylindrical grinder and an Eagle Mk3 Surface grinder. After a brief discussion the seller told me no one wanted to bother with these as they would need dismantling to get them out of the shed and we agreed on a price, this all came in sub £1K

Transporting this lot was an interesting venture, we had underestimated the weight of the mill, the knee on the AJT4 is massive as it houses the power feed gearbox for all 3 axis, in the end we could only get the mill on the trailer and had to go back for the 2 grinders. took us half a day to dismantle and transport these, they guy must have built the shed around them!

The mill takes up a fair chunk of one corner of the workshop but I wouldn't be without it, the surface grinder was sold off along with some of the surplus tooling (made way for a Boxford shaper), The Studer OB was stripped down and refurbished, the motor was shot and the base had a huge crack through it so the drive system was re-vamped and the whole thing mounted on a cabinet fabricated from a couple of surplus lathe cabinets bought for £30 from a Warco open day.

Some years ago I was working in the Perishing Gulf. I wanted a lathe larger than a Myford and decided a Harrison M300 was a good machine to look out for. Over a few weeks I scoured eBay for suitable possibilities. About a week before I was due home, a likely candidate came up for auction by a private seller. He had bought the machine in question from an educational establishment in North London, but after a couple of years ownership using it for amateur gun smithing, he was emigrating to Spain and couldn't take it with him.

I watched the bidding, but no bids until one morning I looked and the listing had been withdrawn. Damn. But lo and behold an hour or so later, it reappeared with a Buy-It-Now price. I jumped in and bought it unseen.

I hired a transit van the day after I got home and went to collect it and was told what had happened. Which was that a potential buyer had been out to the seller's house, tried out the lathe and told the seller to put up the BiN price and when he got back home he would take it. It just so happened that I saw the BiN price before the other chap got back home! I believe there were some unpleasant phone calls from the guy who lost out.

As usual with college machines, there is no wear and it was comprehensively equipped but the paint is tatty thanks to some bored pupils. Very pleased with it.

It goes to show that with care bargains can be had on eBay.

Dave
The Emerald Isle

Exchange and Mart...

Brings back memories...

"and told the seller to put up the BiN price and when he got back home he would take it. It just so happened that I saw the BiN price before the other chap got back home!"

I had something very similar with a BIN I put up for a buyer at a prearranged time. He spent too long over dinner and was late getting to his computer only to find it had gone to someone else. Of course it was my fault.

Roger

I've done it a few times, along these lines:

Listing title: "Special for Fred"

Listing description: "If you're not Fred DON'T BID, your bid will be rejected!"

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

Not a Lathe but a Axminster X1 Mini Mill.

Couple of years back there was an advert on the bay for a X1 mill but it had to be collected, turned out it was less than a 10 min drive from home.

The story with it, was the mill belonged to her ex father in law and it had been in her shed for a couple of years. As he failed to collect it she wanted it gone. The mill was in as new condition so I paid up and left a very happy bunny.

A couple of days later she emailed me to say she had found some outher bits which she thought might be related to the mill if I wanted them to go and collect them or she would bin them.

Turned out the outher bits were a full set of work clamps, three M2 collets, various cutters, some bar stock and a very nice 4" rotary table.

And the cost of this bargin a full Sixty Seven Great British Pounds.

When I bought my Boxford Shaper, I got it from Rotherham.

I had only ever been to Rotherham once before, looking for a Stainless Steel Pressure Vessel fabricators. I got lost and when I realised it, I used someone's drive to turn around in. Turns out the drive I turned around in, was the same driveway as I went up to pick up the shaper. Ridiculous co-incidence.

Regards,

Richard.

I'd been looking for a cheap lathe for months but finally bought my ML7 off ebay just over 3 years ago from Bede Tools and Machinery (**LINK** - No affiliation but very happy customer) purely by chance but I felt like I'd fallen on my feet.

Barry put it, the stand and the tooling on a pallet for me held upright with some webbing ratchet straps, which he asked for me to return which I duly did to his surprise. It's been great fun although he reckoned I'd have grown out of it pretty soon. It came with an old 5" 3-jaw, a beaten up but functioning 4-jaw, faceplates, an old Jacob's chuck, a 4-way toolpost and some old taper drills.

It was in need of a bit (well quite a lot TBH) of TLC and I've mended quite a few bits over the years and upgraded toolposts etc but it's still going strong and is in regular use.

HTH

Jon