"jim rozen" wrote in message ...
In article , Tim Wescott says...

When it's all gone, that's it. No more parts. They've
priced them high because a) they don't care if they sell
or not, and b) there's effectively no competion for NOS
stuff. Actually a smart business decision IMO.

And at the risk of starting a flame war on this thread too -- why not?

No flames there - and I'm only guessing at this of course, given
the history behind the situation. But the guess is that LeBlond
does not have either the tooling or the experience to replicate
the original SB stuff.

The trouble with repro stuff (which is what they would be
producing if they went with alternative techniques) is that
some customer will buy one, and then claim it's not as good
as the original one that his buddy charley got, and want
a refund. Lack of graduations, etc. In general QC on repro
stuff is a big issue.

The Hot Rod crowd had no problem solving this- you can get top quality
reproduction parts for all the American muscle cars from body to interior-
as good or better than original. And at a price a teenager can afford.

I think that somebody at LeBlond said, look, lets do a service
and keep on selling all the stuff that came with the acqusition.
But don't go into the parts manufacture business because that's
not what we do, and we're not willing to invest what it would
take to be first rate at it. And if we're not first rate at
it, we shouldn't be doing it.

Like I say, only a guess there.

Jim

Following is an excerpt from their own biography on the web-

"
-- Today, our product line includes much more than lathes, but we still
get requests for the 10-inch belt-driven toolroom lathe, a standard for over
40 years. Times have changed since the O'Brien brothers, "the Henry Fords of
the lathe," set up their one-room shop. This was a era when South Bend,
Indiana, was a manufacturing center, with Studebaker, the Oliver Plow
Company, and the Singer Sewing Machine Company, among others. Many of those
companies are gone. And certainly, our last twenty-five years were not like
our first, yet similarities remain. John and Miles O'Brien set out with the
single-minded dedication to build the best lathe they could, and they
succeeded. With much sacrifice and hard work, we've maintained that
tradition, and will into the next century."

Yeah- Sure!!
According to their own figures, South Bend was at one time the LARGEST
machine tool manufacturer in the WORLD. With distribution in 88 countries!
Now don't you think there must be literally 10's of thousands of these
machines still around in basements, shops, barns and back yards. With all
that " sacrifice and hard work" and a little common sense don't they realize
that there is probably a decent industry in just supplying parts and
technical advice to the owners of all this old iron- AND that every guy who
gets good and reasonably priced parts from them is a potential long term
customer.


==================================================
please reply to:
JRR(zero) at pkmfgvm4 (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com
==================================================