Trying to sell a lathe.

[sedativeml]

These pictures were lit, with a headlamp. Like I said, my dad passed a couple years ago so the power has been off for that time. I can run extension cords from the neighbors to run the shop vacs to clean it up and I can scrub whatever needs to be scrubbed.. but you're not wrong. It is definitely abandoned in a sense. My dad hit the floor a few feet away from this machine and never went back home.

I'm pretty sure it's 220? I somehow remember a giant three prong plug on the back but I can definitely go look when I get back up there.

If anyone ends up buying it they'll have free range on any lathe related stuff my dad had in his garage because he definitely was not OCD and had every thing, every where

 

[sedativeml]

These pictures were lit, with a headlamp. Like I said, my dad passed a couple years ago so the power has been off for that time. I can run extension cords from the neighbors to run the shop vacs to clean it up and I can scrub whatever needs to be scrubbed.. but you're not wrong. It is definitely abandoned in a sense. My dad hit the floor a few feet away from this machine and never went back home.

I'm pretty sure it's 220? I somehow remember a giant three prong plug on the back but I can definitely go look when I get back up there.

If anyone ends up buying it they'll have free range on any lathe related stuff my dad had in his garage because he definitely was not OCD and had every thing, every where View attachment 467595

Those pictures were after I spent 20 hours sorting and organizing.

 

[sedativeml]

A decade or so ago my uncle passed away. He was an independent machinist in central Maine with a full shop of decent tools. No CNC, but multiple bridgeports, lathes, band saws and all the tooling. He had been doing it since high school, so decades. I was too young to have a clue or place for any of it - how i wish i had known what was there and what he could have taught me.

The short of it is my father handled the estate. He probably was not the best person for the jot, but he did it. The small handheld tools went in a yard sale - and most anything good and portable by one person was outright stolen then.

For weeks he tried to sell the large machines. Eventually the bank had to have them out of the builiding and they were given to a local trade school. Even free wasn't cheap enough and the trade school made it a difficult situation.

I'm not saying your dads lathe isn't worth anything. I'm just saying, clean, turnkey machines with extensive tooling all set up were basically impossible to give away in maine ten years ago. It seemed moving them was always the problem. Sepaerate the jokers from the people who know what they are getting into moving this, and go from there.

Honestly that's a good idea and something I (who is in charge of getting rid of everything) and my sisters who only have a dollar amount interest in should look into. I never even thought of trade schools. They can just have the stuff if they can use it for teaching. I know my dad would have loved that since he randomly brought all of the neighborhood kids into his garage and taught them how to do stuff they asked about.

 

[BGHansen]

Sorry for your loss; I feel your pain as I lost my mom in May 2022 (dad passed in April 2019). I'd be doing them a disservice complaining about the mess they left behind, so I'll call it a vast amount of their treasured items that no one else in the family wants(ed). That's where my perspective is coming from.

First off, congratulations on reeling in the "bags of gold" feeling! I think I see a chop saw, a band saw way in the back, vise, a tank for a welder, etc. The total value of what's there is under $5000, but probably closer to $3000. Shoot pictures of stuff and consult here, or hit eBay and search for the item and select "Sold/completed" on the left side of the page. Sellers can ask $50K for a $2K item, look at completed auctions that sold for a true market price.

If you're like my wife and me, you'll be a bundle of energy starting out and might as well spend it on the pricier stuff because going through literally tons of your dad's old stuff is going to wear you down after a while. Take a look on eBay for things for sale from seller "dece2003"; that's my wife with some of my mom's collectibles for sale. My wife has close to 3-dozen Beanie Baby auctions for $8 buy it now for 5 of them. My wife can be as stubborn as the workday is long; I encouraged her to give all of the 300+ Beanie Babies my mom had to our local hospital as gifts for kids. If she sells them all, she'll we'll get around $200 after eBay fees. At this point, we'd like to just make them go away as our house has been cluttered with this stuff for almost 2 years.

You may consider an estate sale too. I had a buddy who passed away 6 or 7 years ago. He was single, owned the home, and had some eclectic collections. His 3 boys contacted an auction house who came in and appraised what was there. I recall one son saying that the auction house would take something like 30% which seems huge. However, what's your time worth? It sounds like you understand it's not a bag of gold, more like an ounce or two; just making it all go away can be a big win; instead of finding $3000 in the couch cushions you found $2000! I'm second guessing my wife and I spending two days a week for 11 months going through stuff at my parent's house when we could have made one phone call and have it all go away. The contents of my parent's home was less than $15K; we did A LOT of work for what we got (and it wasn't $15K).

Bruce

 

[matthewsx]

You may do best offering everything as-is where-is.

My wife and I sold our Michigan home and did an estate sale. I got lucky with my shop and the buyer bought my entire shop before the sale even started. Yes, you can have an estate sale while you're still living....

My shop was listed here.

https://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/complete-shop-nearly-in-elk-rapids-mi.107156/

He got nearly everything in the pictures for $3000 and I was tickled to get that. Might it have brought more parted out? Maybe, but we lived in rural Northern Michigan so demand for this stuff was questionable at best.

Of course, the best thing would be if you decided to join us in the hobby and brought it all home to your house. Then we could continue to advise you for years to come.

A trade school might be interested but honestly they need to be teaching CNC and 3D printing for folks to get the real jobs that are out there today. Who might be interested is your local small engine repair shop. I had someone give me a milling machine for the taking when I ran my business in Michigan. Ask around the town who might be interested, if you can get a buyer for the whole lot at $2000 you'll be doing great but giving it away and just not scrapping it would make us happy.

I am also very sorry for your loss, my dad passed in 2018 but I had packed up his home and shop 4 years earlier. Fortunately I wanted much of his tools and am happy to be using them to this day. Best wishes.

BTW, if you want I have a picture of my dad in his shop back in the 1960's he was truly happiest with a tool in his hand. Would love to see one of your dad too if you have it.

Dad in his shop

Photo of my dad from the early 1960’s. He built an airplane in this one car garage so I should be fine for any project I want to do in mine. I still have most of the tools in the photo. John

www.hobby-machinist.com

John

 

[Nesse1]

I think $1400 is a decent price. I bought a similar, but newer, and in better condition machine for $1650 about a year go, and I'm in high priced California.

 

[sedativeml]

It's honestly a hard situation. I'd love to keep everything like he wanted me to, I just have nowhere to put it and realistically just no use for a lot of it.

I myself love the idea of simply donating anything useful to a trade/shop class because nobody knew my dad like I did and I know he would absolutely adore the thought of his life's collections being used appropriately because he used to take all of the neighborhood kids in his garage and SHOW them how to do what they wanted him to do for them.

I was on the phone with a local teacher earlier tonight and this machine may just go for $0 as long as he's going to teach the younger generation how to use it.

 

[rogerl]

That is very generous of you to donate all of that to a teacher. Hopefully it will be used to get the younger generation interested in the machine trades. We are sorely lacking machine trades people. We can have all the engineers in the world designing things but if we do not have anyone to make the parts or put the parts together the designs are useless.
My dad converted my old bedroom into a train room. He spent MANY hours building his layout. When he passed away I needed to get the train stuff out of the room to sell the house. I did not know what to do with it. I listed it on Craigslist and a person contacted me about it. He had a special needs son that loved trains. He had a group of kids that all loved trains and he had a room at a local school donated to the group as well. He did not have much money to spend on the layout. I decided to donate the train layout and all of the trains to the train group. I received E-Mails from the group showing the layout put back together and running. For the next few years I would receive annual E-Mails with photos of what the kids were doing with the layout and other layouts. I was very happy I donated the layout to them. I think my dad would have been happy as well to have someone enjoying his layout .
Good luck cleaning out your dads stuff.

Roger L

 

[woodchucker]

Exactly.

Since your name is woodchucker, I just have to ask.. What do you think about this one?

I was gonna keep it for myself because it looks pretty old and kind of neat but I didn't ever see it before I started my estate project and I really don't have anywhere to put it and no real use for it.

sorry, I guess I missed this. The motor looks horrible. I would think the lathe would be about 150-250.

 

[twraska]

I’d suggest some local online auction company that specializes in estate sales.