{"id":2541,"date":"2009-01-14T10:23:38","date_gmt":"2009-01-14T15:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/?p=2541"},"modified":"2009-01-14T10:23:38","modified_gmt":"2009-01-14T15:23:38","slug":"call-me-auction-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/?p=2541","title":{"rendered":"Call me “Auction Jackson”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tools are Everywhere<\/em><\/p>\n

I learned something interesting this week. <\/p>\n

A while back, I located a used machinery dealer who had a bunch of drill presses on hand. He got them from the public schools. Someone asked me which dealer I was talking about. The name is A.M. Metalmaq.<\/p>\n

They wanted $850 for the cheapest press. This is a stupid buy. I saw a brand new one for something like $1250. A used one should not cost more than half of that.<\/p>\n

I rooted around on the web, and I found out that there are a lot of used machines out there, at auction. There are a number of government and government-connected sites that sell these things. You can get a nice Powermatic 1150 for maybe $250. You have to find someone to skid it and ship it, but that costs less than $400, so in the end, it’s worth the time and aggravation. And then there is IRSauctions.com.<\/p>\n

I also learned that Miami-Dade County (I cannot believe we put “Miami” in the name to help South Americans realize where we were) has a store where it unloads surplus items. This may well be where the drill presses I found came from. I plan to run up there and see what they have. I’m sure every Cuban in Miami has been there already; they love a bargain, and ten minutes after one Cuban finds something good, the rest know all about it. But not too many people want big drill presses. And who knows what else they have?<\/p>\n

I located a really nice Buffalo #18. They want $450, which is high for a machine that routinely turns up for $250, but it seems like a wonderful platform for a 3-phase motor and VFD.<\/p>\n

Last night I went to Practicalmachinist.com to get advice on an Ebay drill press. It’s in Amelia Island, and the ad says it’s a Buffalo Forge Model 29. I’m fairly sure there is no such thing. It looks like a Model 18. But I can’t get the seller to answer any questions. It amazes me how lazy people are, in this bad economy. Nobody at Practicalmachinist had any input, but I did notice Jdunmyer<\/a> over there!<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I got to reading about machining. That was a mistake. I managed to get machining out of my system a year or two ago, and last night I found myself looking at small mills and lathes again.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I was saved by the photos of people’s machining projects. It appears that almost nobody does anything with machine tools except for making models of engines. I’m sure this is lots of fun, but what if you don’t want to make engines? I thought machine tools would be fun for a more general purpose. I figured I could use them to make stuff I designed, but since almost nobody else does that, I assume it must be difficult.<\/p>\n

Once again, I checked out local machining courses, and they do not exist. I can drive to the next county five times a week in the morning–for 14 months–but other than that, there is nothing out there.<\/p>\n

So I think I can put machine tools out of my mind for a while. Although I did create a Smartflix account, just in case.<\/p>\n

The disease never goes away completely. It just goes into remission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tools are Everywhere I learned something interesting this week. A while back, I located a used machinery dealer who had a bunch of drill presses on hand. He got them from the public schools. Someone asked me which dealer I was talking about. The name is A.M. Metalmaq. They wanted $850 for the cheapest press. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}