Post up your latest new or used tool purchases

PAToyota said:
Again, I'm like you on your final point. I've made some scores by reading between the lines and having a gut instinct about "bad" listings. As it's been termed around here, the "Google-fu." I'm amazed at the people around me who say "I can't find _____" and in the time they're telling me what they're looking for I've called it up on screen. That does certainly help.
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I have a handful of friends like this. If one of us is looking for something, chances are a half dozen links to listings will be sent out within an hour.

One of my friends once mentioned he needed a 12-15k warn for a Power Wagon conversion he was doing. I found a smokin' deal on one that was far away from both of us but close to another friend. He said he wanted it. A few messages back and forth between various parties and it was picked up - total time from him saying he was looking for one to when our friend had it in his truck was under 2 hours. :laughing:
 
Another free 4x6 band saw. This one's dated 1986, and marked made in Taiwan but otherwise mostly the same as my HF one. Think I'm going to set it up as a dedicated vertical saw.

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I didn't really have to adjust anything, the hinge would bind because someone lost the spacers (or it never had them) so the draft angle in the castings would cause unhappiness if the swingy top half weren't positioned in the middle of the slop on the hinge

also, I'm welding blades outta morse band stock
maybe the chinese blades are ****tier and have too much set or something?
 
Picked up another 20” old school drill press. This one is a powermatic model 1200 variable speed unit. She runs out smooth which I’m pleased with considering I couldn’t test drive it prior to buying it. Only thing I’m pissed about is they fawked me on the drill chuck and someone knocked it out of the spindle before I picked it up. I’m battling that right now but I believe I’m pissing in the wind on it, fawkers.

Anywho, I’m trying to sort out in my head ifn I want to put it in my basement machine shop or my garage wood shop or swap out with my Rockwell/Delta 20” in my fab shop and move it to one of my other shops. Decisions decisions.

I have a really clean (look past the crappy milk paint job someone did to it) Clausing step pulley 20” drill press I’m going to repaint to its oem gray color then sell it. It was missing one of the spindle handles and one was bent shaft, I bought some different ones off of eBay for it but they need to be turned down to the hub thread sized. Clausing is the only mfg out there to use 1/2” shafts with fine threads. Everyone else uses course threads, figures. When I mean it’s a clean drill press, I mean not abused at all. No stupid drill marks in the table top and even tho it’s a hack paint job on it, all the info tags are still on it and not painted over.

I did pick up a powermatic variable speed 15” drill press on a cart for $200 earlier this year. It had a VFD on it. The guy thought the motor was bad and said it runs out very slow and no torque. I checked it out when I got it home and the motor tested out fine. He had the VFD wired to 110v and I figured that was the issue… nope, after I let the smoke out of it, I found the info tag behind the angle iron support it was mounted to. It was for 110v. Oh Kay, never thought you could use one leg of power to build up three legs for 3 phase. So I wired it up back through its oem power switch which I’m happy he left that on the machine, then plugged it into my rotary phase converter. She runs out smooth and sweet. I had to adjust out the variable speed unit as it was way out of wack. I stretched the legs on the mobile cart it’s mounted to and replaced the pos casters with ones that could handle the weight easy. It’s in my machine shop now and will be relocated to which ever shop I’m not putting the 20” in.

You think that’s all right? Well, you’re wrong. I have two more drill presses (make that three really) I have two old school delta Rockwell home owner drill presses. One is a floor model three stepper pulley unit and is a cream puff like new condition. I have another one that is a bit of a rare bird. It’s like a bench unit but it’s mounted to a stupid HD base with a big table top with a gutter around the outer edges. The table top is mounted to the base on a dovetail track for height adjustments. It’s cast iron and heavy as fawk. Both of these will go up for sale also. The third one is a 20” Wilton (made in Taiwan) variable speed drill press I picked up a couple weeks ago. My thoughts were to clean it up and flip it but, I’m not sure that’s going to happen. :capt Kirk voice: I… have… a… plan… :/capt Kirk voice: I have a huge ass old school 20” powermatic wood bandsaw which is a single speed unit. Sooooo, my thoughts are, maaaaaybe I can modify the drill press variable speed system to work inside the bandsaw drive area and convert it to variable speed system. It’s a thought anyway but I’m not sure how much you need to change the speed on a wood saw.

So, there ya have it, my drill press situation, my story and I’m sticking to it.

Photos time as most of y’all love visuals as reading ^ is boring and difficult for some :flipoff2:
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Picked up a very low hour cream puff Bridgeport variable speed knee mill. Gonna replace the unit in my basement shop with it. Nothing really bad with my old unit but the new one has a larger table and a deal I couldn’t pass up really, and because why fawkin not eh? Yeah!

I think they forgot to unplug the servo unit for wherever and moved the mill destroying the bottom of the unit. I have a new servo brand unit I bought at a local auction around 8 years ago still in the box for $100. Besides that, someone has a knob fetish and stole several knobs off the mill x y z crank handles. They’re missing the round safety balls on the handles and missing the complete handle on the servo end. People are fawked in the head I tell ya.

Anywho, photo of the mill for y’all to feast your beedy eyeballs upon.
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I did pretty good on this deal. I sold a 20” Delta/Rockwell wood bandsaw for $1200 and bought this Grob 18” variable speed metal bandsaw for $800.

It runs out nice but needs new tires on it and I’ve got to buy a bunch of blades for it also. I never heard of this brand of saws before until I looked them up before making the deal on it. It’s a huge company and an old one at that. Still in business today making commercial bandsaws.

This one came with two adjustable arm work lights on it. The build switch futures are a bit tired and need some TLC. I’ll modify them over to LED setup.

One thing that turned out great was the HD mobile base I built for the old wood saw fit perfectly under this saw. Both saws had the SAE footprint. That type of stuff usually never happens for me but I’ll take it for sure.

The Grob saw to feast your eyeballs upon

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I have my father's floor standing Craftsman drill press that he bought when he bought his house in the late 1960s. It's decent, but I've always somewhat wanted to "trade up" to something like the first Powermatic or Rockwell you have in your photos. But I picked up a Bridgeport similar to the one in your photo last summer, so between that and the Craftsman I really don't need to upgrade the Craftsman...

I'd love a vertical bandsaw like your Grob, but really don't have the room for it. I did upgrade my father's Craftsman wood bandsaw to a 14" Laguna that I scored for a ridiculous price and I have a Jet 7x12 horizontal saw that mostly serves my needs, though.
 
Forklift goobers poked the oiler tank reservoir. Taking it apart I think it could use a freshening up anyways. H&W sells a new tank and rebuild kit so I clickity clicked buy now button.
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This is the Wilton 15” drill press I bought I’m thinking about using the variable drive on my bandsaw with. You can see just how much larger the powermatic 20” drill press is. This measurement is from upright post to center of spindle, similar to how bandsaws are measured for sizing.

This Wilton came with a digital readout for spindle rpm’s. It was missing on this unit and a new one is $400 aaaaaaand… nope, nope, nope!

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Picked up a LeBlond 20" Rapid Production lathe from the 40's today for a few hundred $, I think it's about 4000 lbs haha!

It runs and the hand controls all seem to work smoothly, but before I really use it I'm going to clean it all up and re-wire it, move the electrical panel from the back to on top so that I can get it closer to a wall. Also learn what exactly all the levers do. No compound slide on these models, and no threading capability, but honestly I rarely ever use the compound or threading on my small lathe. Just wanted something bigger.

Got a bunch of bins full of tooling, and 3 other chucks as well. The largest 4 jaw chuck I can only just barely pick up by myself, going to need to use the engine hoist to mount it for sure.

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So, about 9 years ago I bought a mill x axis power feed unit new in the box at an auction. I didn’t know anything about brand names of them at the time. I figured I’d buy it for my Y axis if I could get it cheap enough. I bought it for around $50 and put it in storage until I could get around to messing with it. Well, that never happened.

Fast forward to today. I bought a new to me cream puff variable speed Bridgeport mill. They damaged the servo x axis power feed unit with a forklift or something. Just the bottom of it but not the housing or internal guts. Looking online for parts needed and suspect it needs (circuit board and power switch) pushes the cost too high.

So I remember my auction unit and dig it out of storage. Turns out it’s a servo 150 unit, how sweet is that? They are over $1,000 new.

This one is painted metal flake black, maybe they all are today?!? No idea but it’s blingy under the dust from storage.

It’s all complete including the install instructions too 😎

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A deal popped up on FB MP that I jumped on. This thing is built like a vidmar or lista box. I bought it from an Air Force F15 mechanic. Him and his wife are moving to England to a base there and are thinning out their stuff for the move.

Anywho, this is one stupid heavy beefy box for $200. Has a beefy SS top and bottom cart base the box sets in. HD casters with locking swivel wheels. 😎
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I got a bunch of misc hardware stuff and some tools for $10 from the guy I got the tool box from. Couple caulking guns, Milwaukee chalk line and chalk, bunch of screws and a bunch of other stuff.

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TrikeKid said:
Another free 4x6 band saw. This one's dated 1986, and marked made in Taiwan but otherwise mostly the same as my HF one. Think I'm going to set it up as a dedicated vertical saw.

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If you get it done post up a build thread or something so I can learn from your mistakes. I've had a few kicking around with the same thought to set them up as a dedicated vertical saw. I think I read somewhere about someone doing a similar thing and doing away with the twist on the blade guides so the blade runs more in line with the wheels to get a bit more side clearance.
 
So, I removed the drawers from the latest tool box purchase I made to oil up the rollers on the drawer slides as they’re dry as a bone in the desert. < long sentence eh?

I discovered a Hiden storage location in the tool box. I’ll dig this stuff out and figure out what all is in here.

Austin’s photo loader is fubared. No idea why it’s rotating my photo 90*. I even rotated it in my album 90* then 270* but still loads this way.

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