New Milling Machine

[Oldmechthings]

Saturday at Probasco's show and swap meet in Huntsville I acquired a new (to me) milling machine. Would you believe I had to pay $35 for it? Now I'll probably have to take in work in order to pay it off.
Yesterday I had lots of other stuff I should have been doing, but every time I walked past that new (old) mill I had to fiddle with it a little. It is not a bit cleaner, but I did get it adjusted and loosened up. Then I couldn't resist putting a piece of material in it and giving it a try. I suppose it is like acquiring an antique tractor or engine. You just have to keep fiddling with it till you get it running and try it out. You could actually do some work with them, but you probably would not want to have to use them if you had new ones. While I was trying the mill I had a crazy thought. Wouldn't it be something if some young thing could get hold of me and and restore me back to working condition. Of course I do not believe people are as restore able as machines. When they are wore out they are wore out!
The intended use is to display it with my other old machines. There is no name on it. By chance does anyone know anything about this machine, like make or age?
Birk

 

[applescotty]

Birk,

Looks to me like a Lewis mill. Here's the Yahoo group for them:
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/LewisMachineTool/

Scott

 

[Bogstandard]

In it's day Birk, I bet that was the dogs dangly bits.

Did it come with the arbor support?

John

 

[Oldmechthings]

John
What you see is what I got, except it did have a homemade power feed motor on the table. A good friend thought that would be nice addition for his mill, so being a "Cranky" old man as I am, I took it off and gave it to him.
It has a #3MT in the spindle, and I just happen to have a bit of tooling in the collection that will fit that. It might look interesting set up with a conventional milling cutter. Building an overarm and an arbor would not be much of a problem, if I ever felt that I wanted to do that much with it.
Birk

 

[tel]

It's a luverly hunk of old iron Birk - treasure it!

 

[CrewCab]

Credit Crunch or whatever ................ I reckon that's a good $35 worth Birk 8)

CC

 

[Bogstandard]

I love old machinery.

Whenever I see something like that, I try to imagine all the people who have used it, and the sort of fantastic work they managed to get out of such a basic lump of metal.

What a sad life I've got.

John