Dangit .

I'm outta here for 3 days in 31 minutes ! :dancing banana:
 
WHOA, going home early.
 
LOL, my time didn't change :)
 
You're in a different world :big grin: I'm packing up the pickem-up . Be home in an hour , I'll post pics of the progress today . :)
 
That would be cool:cool:
 
I'm going to bed.....be safe
 
My son is the same way.
He scraps cars in his spare time IN his shop and saves ALL the valuable metals.
He just gifted me this after my search at local suppliers for a piece of 1 x 6 x 12" aluminum bar for a project.
"Here Dad, see what you can make out of this."
He smelts all the aluminum heads, pistons, and what not into ingots.
Has a huge stack of them waiting on the price to hopefully go up!!
 

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Wish I could find places with garbage like that! Haven't found local shops willing to let me buy drops even.
 
mmcmdl said:
I had a small very well tooled shop after years and years of auctions long before the internet age existed . I worked it and my buddy worked part time for me . When my 3rd was born , we outgrew the house . I sold my equipment , RPCs , blast cabinets , compressor , anything large . I packed up all the tooling which I considered the hard stuff to replace .

I clubbed the basement and we stayed in that house for 2 more years . I bought another house 100 feet away and that's where we are now . I went 20 years without machines , did tractor restorations which was pretty fun . Maybe 6 years ago I get a call from the guy who was working for me . He wanted to know if I wanted any equipment . I told him no but ended up with 3 mills , a couple lathes , saws etc . I was a supervisor at the company and brought him in and he ended up being the plant manager after I switched jobs .

So I got the equipment , didn't really want to get back into machining , and sold it all ( for a very small profit ) :dollars:

I kept all my tooling though . Machines seem to fall into my lap these days , knowing so many in the trade . They are small , 12" lathes , a BP , surface grinder , other small stuff . I still own the other house with the nice basement , and it's a very hard decision as to what I want to do . Get a small hobby shop going again ? Stick to the Kubota to make a few side bucks ? Get back into Cub Cadets ? Who knows . :dunno:

Right now , I'm trying to get rid of doubles , triples , exotic tooling etc . If I do decide to keep a lathe and mill , it'll be for very basic stuff , but I'm leaning the way of clearing out the house . I've stored this stuff for too many years .
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It's taken me all this time to understand the difference in the tooling because I didn't have access to it. Until I got to this CL guy selling off tooling from a couple of shops. I bought a couple of "bundles" of lathe bits and it's turned into a treasure trove of specialized carbide bits of all sizes including some tiny ones. And all for cheap.

It is some kind of law of nature about when you don't care about something, in your case machining equipment, it's everywhere. Sounds like if you weren't so busy with your day job you could be a dealer.

We all have the thing that makes us happy and yours is restoring mowers and tractors. I know all about changing interests and obsessions. Machining for me is what I do to enable other things I'm interested in. Like metal forming.
 
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