On Monday, January 16, 2017 at 2:09:39 PM UTC-5, Christopher Tidy wrote:
Am Montag, 16. Januar 2017 19:47:22 UTC+1 schrieb :

Two years ago I scrapped my 1917 Taylor & Fenn C-frame knee mill. The scrap yard said it weighed 840 lb. It had a really massive C-frame, which was rigid as hell. But the knee was not. It was more flexible than a Series I Bridgeport.

Interesting. Doesn't a Bridgeport weigh close to 2000 lb?

Yes. A Series I weighs 1930 lb. However, it has a lot more weight up high and a broader base, with angle-head capability, multi-speed pulleys, and a motor, than my simple C-frame machine. My machine was somewhat smaller, which is why I got my hands on it. We had it re-scraped in 1968 and I used it in the shop of which I was a co-owner in the 1970s.

The Series I was a brilliant machine but the knee and table setup are pretty flimsy compared to a production machine. They had data tables to allow for compensation of end-to-end table sag with different workpiece weights.


When I tried to gift my knee mill to the American Precision Museum in VT, they politely refused it, telling me there probably were between 100 and 200 milling machine builders at the time. Many of them were poorly engineered. All of the Sears machines on that catalog page look flexible as hell. Some were foot-powered; others ran from overhead belts or, in today's terms, feeble sub-horsepower motors. They could get away with it when they had little power and weak tools, which is what they had. Today's machines can hardly be compared with them.

Maybe I'm misinformed about the quality of the old Sears, Roebuck stuff. I have a few manual machine tools from the 1960s and '70s which match or better any new machine I've seen (drill press, power hacksaw, bench grinder), but it's a different period of time and I chose those machines carefully.

Sears made a good 10-in. flat-way lathe, built by Atlas, and a smaller, 6-in. machine that Jim mentioned. I had one. Like many others, I bent the spindle and had to turn a new one in my 10-in South Bend. g

Some were good. Others were not.

Comparing US-built commercial machines from the '60s with today's hobby-machine imports is not a very fair comparison. My Walker-Turner drill press and Delta bandsaw are better than any of the Asian imports I've seen, except for the high-end Jet and Japanese machines.


Actually, I'm ogling that Jet bandsaw now. That looks nice.

As for the prices for good commercial machine tools of the 1900 era, look for online copies of old issues of _American Machinist_. They're available online. FWIW, I was an editor at _AM_ once upon a time, but I don't go back quire that far. d8-)

You remember any of the names of the best machine tool brands from that era?

No, not many from that far back. Sorry. Brown & Sharp was around then. So was LeBlond. Maybe I'll think of some more.

--
Ed Huntress


Chris