My name is Dustin and I have an old iron addiction

[averagef250]

Last friday I did some serious cleaning and project re-evaluating in my 30X40 pole barn that doubles duty serving as both my full time job and home for my non-money making "projects". I pulled maybe 2.5 ton of you name it stuff that I'm really not going to get to anytime soon and nobody wants to come haul away so it's going to scrap. I think it's a sign that a project just isn't worth doing no matter how cool you think it is when you put it on craigslist for 1/10th of scrap price and nobody wants it. Anyway, the shop looks great, tons of room to walk around, a whole bay of the shop was now open whereas before I was tripping over stuff everywhere.

Well, I got wind of an old Reed Prentice engine lathe for sale locally and there must be a buzzer that goes off in my head that says "clean space in shop, fill it with something". That's just what I did. I called on the lathe, found it was only 10 minutes away, somehow justified this 16"X80" machine (that's about a 150" long X 60" tall X 48" deep footprint and 9000 pounds) fitting in the shop and having the time to fix it up. There's something addicting about buying, fixing and using heavy old machinery to me. I'll get some pictures up as soon as I get it to the shop.

Anybody else have this problem?

[FreakysFords]

Hello and thank you for the introduction

Hello, my name is Frank and I have an iron addiction.

yup and yup

Clearing out room in the back of the house for a mill

Gotta keep it in the house till the shop is done

Cool find. Can't wait to see the pics.

[averagef250]

I found this RP on google images. It's the same machine, just 5 or so feet shorter ( a friend has that identicle model). The very, very odd thing about the 16X80 RP is it has a 1975 build date. It looks to be 1950's, it was built for the US Navy and stored as a backup machine in cosmoline for decades and I've read that Reed Prentice went out of business in 1966. It's in pretty nice shape compared to other production machines of this era, no broken gears inside which these are known for, no scoring in the ways or crash marks of any kind, some chucks, steady, Aloris toolholders and post.

I've been subconciously looking for a heavy manual lathe and looked at several Mori Seiki's, Mori copies and a couple leblonds. Everything has been an old clunker, way too big or really nice with a price that reflects that. I'm a little familiar with the Reeds and know thier shortcomings from someone who's used and repaired them extensively.

[OldRedFord]

Nice find.

I have been wanting a American Pacemaker for a while now.

Id take a Reed Prentice tho.

[R.Smith]

I had an F.E. Reed lathe circa 1890 but swapped it for a smaller Seneca Falls model circa 1910. Gotta keep up with the times.

As for old iron, everything in my shop is pre 1925 and driven by line shaft. Drill presses, shaper, pedestal grinders, band saw, power hack, forging hammer, blowers, ironworker...and this represents about a quater of the machines I've drug home, torn apart, rebuilt and put back together. Once you get into old machinery you meet people with similar interests and the swapping starts.

Sitting in front of the shop now is an old industrial laundry "soaker". A friend was gutting a building and found some hangers, pulleys ect, so he called me to come get 'em. When I got there I saw this huge machine that was about to be scrapped. It looks like something out of a Jules Verne novel. Picture a giant grill with graceful lines, brass fixtures, riveted together and big enough to put a 300 lb hog in. It has giant drive gears (36"dia) on each end that are driven by a rear mounted countershaft that's run off an overhead line. I plan to remove the drum, build a carosel rotisserie and a big spit for it, attach a smoke box to the back and run it with a verticle hit and miss engine.

Why? Because I can...and I've never seen an industrial smoker with and slip belt clutch, belt shifters, brass drip oilers and brass hand wheels to rotate the spit!

I might even throw an ice cream maker on the trailer with it.

[Redcap]

I had an F.E. Reed lathe circa 1890 but swapped it for a smaller Seneca Falls model circa 1910. Gotta keep up with the times.

As for old iron, everything in my shop is pre 1925 and driven by line shaft. Drill presses, shaper, pedestal grinders, band saw, power hack, forging hammer, blowers, ironworker...and this represents about a quater of the machines I've drug home, torn apart, rebuilt and put back together. Once you get into old machinery you meet people with similar interests and the swapping starts.

Sitting in front of the shop now is an old industrial laundry "soaker". A friend was gutting a building and found some hangers, pulleys ect, so he called me to come get 'em. When I got there I saw this huge machine that was about to be scrapped. It looks like something out of a Jules Verne novel. Picture a giant grill with graceful lines, brass fixtures, riveted together and big enough to put a 300 lb hog in. It has giant drive gears (36"dia) on each end that are driven by a rear mounted countershaft that's run off an overhead line. I plan to remove the drum, build a carosel rotisserie and a big spit for it, attach a smoke box to the back and run it with a verticle hit and miss engine.

Why? Because I can...and I've never seen an industrial smoker with and slip belt clutch, belt shifters, brass drip oilers and brass hand wheels to rotate the spit!

I might even throw an ice cream maker on the trailer with it.

[R.Smith]

I would post a pic if I knew how. Pouring babbit I know. Computers...not so much.

[averagef250]

Nice find.

I have been wanting a American Pacemaker for a while now.

I've never actually seen one in a shop or heard of one for sale on the west coast. Seems the NW has far more toolroom style lathes than heavy american production stuff. In the past few months I've found a half dozen mori's and copies. Seen a lot of machine tools around Ohio.

R. Smith, my first large lathe was a 20X70 german machine from around 1900-1910. It was badged AHE, never heard of the name since. All threads were whitworth. I bought it covered in rust and disassembled out of a woodshed for $150, cleaned and assembled it and used it for several years. The machine was fun to operate, but it was just flat worn out in every respect. The only way I could get decent material removal was in back gear with HSS and that didn't last long. The feed direction lever actually blew a part of the headstock casting out when it gave out. After that was rigged engaged the countershaft in the quick change gearbox twisted off. I figure they just didn't have the metalurgy back then. I sold it for $100 as opposed to scrapping it. It wasn't very heavy for it's size, maybe 2200 pounds?

I had enough of the belt machines with that experience. I like looking at them, but a guy's hard pressed to actually make money with one. I hope this Reed turns out better. It needs work, but what's funny to me is my 22X60 Mazak is a 1980, only 5 years newer than this RP and the Mazak looks new in most respects. The cross slide on the RP has some wear and somebody's messed with the gib, when I tear it down I think I'll see if any of the local grinding outfits can fix it up and make me a new gib. I don't really care about flaking, I have big machines without it and they have held up better than the ones that have it.

[R.Smith]

I don't use my machine tools to make money with...at least not directly. I use them to fix the machines I DO make money with. The little Seneca is more than enough for turning pins and bushings ect. That's pretty much all I do with it. It has a 4ft bed with a 9"swing. Weird thing is, it's a change gear lathe and came with a complete set of both standard and metric gears. Even came with the original overhead countershaft and matching line pulleys. These are usually the first things to go when they're "modified". A friend found it up in WVa. I don't know any more about it. It's in pretty mint condition though.

I've pretty much collected all the old machines I need for what I do. I try and not become an exhibitor. Everything in my shop has to have a purpose and work, right down to the 1919 Western Electric wall phone. I made that decision the day my stack of 7 anvils fell over in the floor. Now I'm moving into the house. I'm redoing the [censored] circa 1930. I just finished restoring and installing an old wood-gas cook stove and porceline sink. Now I'm hunting for a GE Monitor Top fridge. If my stack of iron skillets and pots ever falls over, somebodies gonna die.

If anybody really wants to see my shop I can email a pic. I've tried figuring out how to get it from the disc to the site but haven't been succesful.

[R.Smith]

Ok, try this. If it works it should show a pic of the F.E.Reed lathe. These pics are about 6 years old.

http://members.cox.net/lineshaft/Lineshaft_Photos.htm

[Redcap]

Ok, try this. If it works it should show a pic of the F.E.Reed lathe. These pics are about 6 years old.

http://members.cox.net/lineshaft/Lineshaft_Photos.htm

Worked fine, awesome photos and an even more awesome shop!

[averagef250]

That's a really cool shop Roger, I have not seen a lineshaft lathe in such fine (apparently) condition.

[R.Smith]

Thanks. I wish I had more room I would have kept the Reed. A friend researched the serial number and found that it was made in 1891 and sold to the Edison Electric in NY. I found it up in the mountains in western Pa. The coolest thing about it was that it still had the original cast iron chip pan. Several people were more interested in that than they were the lathe when I sold it.

[averagef250]

No kidding, Edison? That's impressive. I had a similiar experience with the big old AHE lathe I sold. I sold it with 5 chucks and two of those chucks were worth atleast $300 a piece. It had a real nice 18" single acting cushman 4 jaw with 2 piece soft and hard jaws with it that I'd never seen anything like. I used that chuck quite a bit. The 4 jaws had a little more grip and made it a cinch to hold square and even rectangular work. I got alot of calls from guys that just wanted the tooling or this and that, but not the lathe.

The funny thing is I'd advertized that lathe for about a month before giving up, taking the ad down and started to load the lathe on the trailer to scrap it. In the end, I just toppled the lathe on it's side and dragged it out of the shop with the tractor. I was trying to break it in half, since I'd get more money for it in scrap in smaller pieces. As I was trying to lift one end on the trailer, the phone rang and a local farmer said he wanted it, I told him I was scrapping it, but he still wanted it and wanted to know how much. Told him I'd sell it for 1/2 of scrap price and include the tooling if he fixed it. He was there in 20 minutes and hauled it off. Just amazed me that the 100 year old machine was literally 10 minutes away from being soup cans, had just suffered the worst damage it had likely ever been through and then it was saved again.


Funny how some really nice machines have gone to the shredder and a beat down damaged broken one gets saved. My 22X60 Mazak Lathe was on it's way to the shredder, the shredder would have paid 3 times what I did for it, but the owner couldn't stomach seeing it go to china. I get compliments from machinists that come into the shop on how nice that machine is for it's age.

[averagef250]

I got the lathe home last night around 10 PM. Nothing bad actually happened, but in the future if someone says thier 17,000 lb excavator will lift a 9000 lb lathe listen to the voice inside that says "this is a very very bad idea".

I spent the day unloading the lathe, inspecting and assessing the machine. What is here is in good shape. I say what is here because as I've gotten farther into it I've got a pretty substantial list of important pieces that are actually missing from the lathe. It was rebuilt in 1975 and I suspect whoever did the rebuild lost a few parts. Though it's been 44 years since one of these lathes was made, a lot of them were made and I'll get the parts eventually. I also found the origin of this machine in an abundance of federal government stampings and hidden ID plaques under the lathe. It was "property of the united states government Kaiser company Portland, OR". This lathe was bought new by Kaiser shipyards here in Portland around 1940-42. The shipyards were closed in 1946.

I pulled the carraige and apron completely down to make it as-new again. I have 600 pounds of iron off this lathe going to be hot tanked in the morning to remove 70 years of gunk and prep for paint. Tomorrow I will strip the bed and chip pan for paint. This lathe is going to be sprayed in light Ford gray (off white) epoxy urathane equipment enamel. My goal is a $10K machine for less than $2K and a whole lot of elbow grease.