1959 Craftsman tool Cat - Lathe & Mills

I was only 7 years old when that catalogue came out but - those were the days! I remember my father taking me to a fairly classy dept. store in Ottawa called Ogilvies. It had a power tool store around the corner (that was out real destination) filled with wonderous machines like metal lathes, big table saws, precision measuring equipment and beautiful wood lathes. The cool thing was that my father new how to use them all. He had been an electrician in war time factories and learned a lot. That was 1959 or 60 and my love of tools and building things was already well ingrained. Can you imagine Macys or Sears having something like that now?

Thanks for the catalogue memories.

Michael
 
I was 5 years old then!

I have more tool catalogs coming so keep watching.
 
The prices seem low to us now,but I was lucky to make $1.00 an hour back then. In 1963,I got my first REAL job teaching shop,and made $2.50 an hour in Portsmouth,Va.. I thought I was in Heaven!! I recall I cleared $24.00 a week after taxes at $1.00 an hour for a 40 hour week in my earlier jobs. How many weeks would I work to buy the $550.00 lathe,if I bought nothing else? That would have been nearly 23 weeks of work!!! That does not include the $595.00 36" lathe with the stand! As a teacher,I would have worked less,but with trying to live on my pay,and taxes,the lathe was MUCH farther away than what we can get today. We are lucky these days,except American manufacturing is suffering,they say. Yet,On a T.V. special,they said that America was still the #1 manufacturing co. in the World!!

I have a 1955 Sears tool catalog around here somewhere. It is fun to read it,but you must keep wages in those days in mind. Gold was $24.00 an ounce for many years back then,too. We bought a house for $7,000.00,IIRC. In 1965,I bought my first house for $18,000.00. It had a full basement underneath. The builder had had an upholstering business there. The payments were $125.00 / month. I think I paid $800.00 down. This was in Western North Carolina,where my wife was from.

That model 12" lathe,bench version,was my very first lathe. I paid $850.00 on sale in 1974. In 1 year,the price had jumped to about $1250.00,IIRC. I was able to sell the lathe for what I had paid,and put it towards a $1700.00 10" x 24" Jet. I had made enough money with the Sears to pay for the Jet working in evenings.
 
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