Dev Emch
12-28-2005, 5:03 AM
Many folks here like to buy machines that are shiny and new. Shiny and new is nice and it sells. Oh Boy Does it Sell! Its like the california orange versus the florida orange. One is nice and plump and shiny and defect free. The other has old leather blotches on its not so nice exterior. But ever wonder why they like to juice Florida oranges? Under that ugly duckling exterior one finds the super sweet juice hence the expession.... Is The Juice Worth The Squeeze?
Many old iron resellers do what we OWWM guys call The Sherwin Williams Restoration. This is not a complement! All the effort goes into making things look good and shiny but inside lurks all the defects of a used war horse. Worn bearings, camel hump way systems in need of scraping, motors on their last legs, cracked castings and missing parts or parts obtained from some other donor source.
If you buy the machine outright knowing all these defects up front, then you can work them into a fair price. But what happens if you fall for the shiny paint and bobbels and get the thing home only to find that you have 6 months of restoration pergatory on your hands?
And then you find that the paint is not industrial enamel but rather some discount brand from home depot used to paint dog condos? Congrats, you just bought an expensive trip to the acid dip tank and media blaster.
The best way to purchase an old OWWM machine is to buy it in the wild. If you buy one that has been rebuilt, make sure its done by someone with machine tool experience and restoration experience. The pros always have jackets on every machine which contains receipts for bearings, paint, media and acid dip services, number of hours spent on restoration, dialing in sheets with pertinent measurements, etc. etc. With the advent of digital cameras, they also have CDs that contain a photo record of the machine and the work done.
An excellent example of one such logs is the following URL:
http://hardinge.csparks.com/
This essay covers in horrid detail *HOW* to rebuild a machine correctly. What if that lathe has just been shot with a spray can of new shiny hardinge gray paint and thrown up on ebay? That would be a sherwin williams restoration.
So once again, the buyer looking for old iron has to watch those dealer types like a hawk. You often get no warranty and you often get cracked castings. I personally have had to repair a number of cracked castings and the prefrerred way is to send out a modified pattern to an amish foundary and have the thing recast. Welding cast iron often does not work even through many will tell you it does. If you have to weld the cracked parts back together, often, the old timers brazed the parts with brass. Brazing with brass is more like a soldering job than a fusing or welding job.
The back fence on my oliver mortiser was cracked and had to be brazed. Unfortunately it leaves an ugly shiny gold colored scar. In time, I will send this out to be recast as well. Then I have to machine the rough casting.
Broke castings are the UGLY in machine restoration. Nothing will turn your stomach faster than to discover cracked brackets holding the coping motor of an expensive oliver tenoner onto the machine itself. Two hours later, the coping motor and a portion of the brackets are now paper weights in your office for a year and half.
So Beware the Sherwin Willams Restoration... Make sure the Juice is Worth the Squeeze.
Many old iron resellers do what we OWWM guys call The Sherwin Williams Restoration. This is not a complement! All the effort goes into making things look good and shiny but inside lurks all the defects of a used war horse. Worn bearings, camel hump way systems in need of scraping, motors on their last legs, cracked castings and missing parts or parts obtained from some other donor source.
If you buy the machine outright knowing all these defects up front, then you can work them into a fair price. But what happens if you fall for the shiny paint and bobbels and get the thing home only to find that you have 6 months of restoration pergatory on your hands?
And then you find that the paint is not industrial enamel but rather some discount brand from home depot used to paint dog condos? Congrats, you just bought an expensive trip to the acid dip tank and media blaster.
The best way to purchase an old OWWM machine is to buy it in the wild. If you buy one that has been rebuilt, make sure its done by someone with machine tool experience and restoration experience. The pros always have jackets on every machine which contains receipts for bearings, paint, media and acid dip services, number of hours spent on restoration, dialing in sheets with pertinent measurements, etc. etc. With the advent of digital cameras, they also have CDs that contain a photo record of the machine and the work done.
An excellent example of one such logs is the following URL:
http://hardinge.csparks.com/
This essay covers in horrid detail *HOW* to rebuild a machine correctly. What if that lathe has just been shot with a spray can of new shiny hardinge gray paint and thrown up on ebay? That would be a sherwin williams restoration.
So once again, the buyer looking for old iron has to watch those dealer types like a hawk. You often get no warranty and you often get cracked castings. I personally have had to repair a number of cracked castings and the prefrerred way is to send out a modified pattern to an amish foundary and have the thing recast. Welding cast iron often does not work even through many will tell you it does. If you have to weld the cracked parts back together, often, the old timers brazed the parts with brass. Brazing with brass is more like a soldering job than a fusing or welding job.
The back fence on my oliver mortiser was cracked and had to be brazed. Unfortunately it leaves an ugly shiny gold colored scar. In time, I will send this out to be recast as well. Then I have to machine the rough casting.
Broke castings are the UGLY in machine restoration. Nothing will turn your stomach faster than to discover cracked brackets holding the coping motor of an expensive oliver tenoner onto the machine itself. Two hours later, the coping motor and a portion of the brackets are now paper weights in your office for a year and half.
So Beware the Sherwin Willams Restoration... Make sure the Juice is Worth the Squeeze.