My father was a navy machinist and fabricator most of his life. It's been 20 years since he passed and I am only now getting around to moving and cleaning up some equipment. The mill is a 1942 Bridgeport turret mill pulled off an old WW2 warship in the 70's. It has a 110 and 220 amp motor with a extra ram head and original 15" rotary table. The lathe was made in the 50's to 60's in Los Angeles by W.T. Wills co. I am also going through 4 full roll aways of tooling, bits, collets, etc. I will post more pics when I get them cleaned, oiled, and running sweet. =)
Finally getting around to cleaning up lathe/mill
- Thread starter maidenfreak
- Start date
Nice projects. I bet they clean up nice.
If you do some searches on the net or go to sites like Pratical Machinist and Machinistweb there are a lot of guys that completely restore those older machines and go step by step on how they did it, How to paint it, where to get parts, how to fix different things, etc. I came close to buying an old South Bend about a month ago. If it would have had at least a 1-1/4 spindle bore I would have bought it.
Look like fun projects. I'd tear everything down, clean out all the old oil and crud, replace anything worn, repaint and assemble. You can get them looking near new
If your father used these in the Navy I bet they were taken care of. Most large shops have one or 2 scrub machines they do crap work on but the ones people had to use all the time and trust to be accurarate were taken care of. I hope you enjoy redoing them!
If you do some searches on the net or go to sites like Pratical Machinist and Machinistweb there are a lot of guys that completely restore those older machines and go step by step on how they did it, How to paint it, where to get parts, how to fix different things, etc. I came close to buying an old South Bend about a month ago. If it would have had at least a 1-1/4 spindle bore I would have bought it.
Look like fun projects. I'd tear everything down, clean out all the old oil and crud, replace anything worn, repaint and assemble. You can get them looking near new
If your father used these in the Navy I bet they were taken care of. Most large shops have one or 2 scrub machines they do crap work on but the ones people had to use all the time and trust to be accurarate were taken care of. I hope you enjoy redoing them!
Here is a link you might enjoy reading. He has a bunch of stuff on his site thats interesting.
http://benchtest.com/w-south_bend_9.html
http://benchtest.com/w-south_bend_9.html
Thanks for the advice I am sure I will be searching for help when tearing them down. According to my Uncle my father used both machines until '91 and they have been used a few times himself since then. He did the upkeep and they were running when they were eventually stored. I am hoping I can convert the mill to cnc that would be pretty cool! I will post pics of the restoration. Its kind of cool in my book to use my fathers tools and equipment for making cues it is theraputic for me to work with my hands and an honor to do so.
Jerry
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk
Jerry
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk
Last edited:
Nice old machines, especially the mill. You might want to go to cuecomponents.com and buy you some instructional dvd's, and materials, when you get them up and running.Mr. Barringer is a master builder, and i'm sure you will learn alot from him.:thumbup:
Thanks for the advice! I already have a small shop and have been building cues for awhile now. These will just give me more toys to play with.