What Did You Buy Today?

Weldingrod1 said:
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This is how I feel coming out of cold water :grin:
 
End of last year, I bought a steel box of random 'Engineers Tools' on ebay via 'Best Offer'. There was one picture and everything was piled up, still in the box.

I spotted a handful of unused HSS blanks, what looked like some relatively unused files, some calipers and verniers (including a handy pocketable little 4" fella) and a load of taps and dies that looked quite shiny. Oh, and the 12" by 6" by 9" box looked in quite good condition.

I offered £20 and the postage was a tenner.

Turned out the box was quite corroded and the 4" vernier shaft was warped just enough to make the movement unpleasantly stiff even after a good clean and oil.

Eh, the HSS blanks were 10mm and 8mm and were uncorroded, the files were pretty sharp (if a little rusty; Evaporust dealt with that), and I covered a fair range of tapping needs with the taps and dies (many of which were virtually unused, some even with the 'wax' still on them). Also, at the bottom was a nice bit of cast iron 6" by 4" by 3", with only a bit of light surface rust on it.

At the very bottom of the box was some milling related stuff that, as I didn't have a mill at the time, and didn't know anything about, I put in a cupboard and pretty much forgot about.

Fast forward to a few days ago, when I got the stuff out of that cupboard (still trying to get my storage sorted) and took another look:

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Well that's handy now I have a mill. :)

Did a bit of googling, and you can still get the collets (posilock) for not much. The chuck's shaft is MT3, which fits my mill, and its in pretty good nick; just needs a bit of cleaning really.

The collet nut glides on the threads and I've managed to find a picture of the Osbourn Titanic II box that has the instructions on it. I found a bunch of threaded milling cutters, too, in various dia. shafts (8, 10 and 12 mm) in the cupboard. They may well be scrap, mind; need to have a proper look.

The V-blocks are in reasonably tidy condition. No dints or gouges, just a teensy bit of surface corrosion staining.

I have a pretty-much-complete set of ER32 collets, so I'll get an ER32 chuck for the mill at some point, but it's nice to be able to choose when I spend the money on that.

Plus I have the sentimental satisfaction of owning a useful piece of apparently well-made, well-looked-after, English-manufactured toolholding; that's nice. :)

I remember being faintly disappointed with the contents of the box (I think I really fancied that little 4" vernier :grin:) but now I'm quite pleased with the return on my £30 layout.
 
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GrifterGuru said:
@SouthernChap

Thats what I like about this country, the bartering / haggling principle. The "make an offer" on ebay just seems to be an extension of "heres what I want for it, what will you give me for it?"

Sounds like a good deal overall.
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Like I said, I wasn't cock-a-hoop back when the parcel arrived, although even then, I figured I'd done okay. I'm well pleased now. :grin:

The thing I really like about this country, is the fact that a fair few lazy house-clearance outfits know even less than me about machining, and are too lazy or daft to recognise the value of what they're trying to flog on eBay. :grin:
 
jet 1440 came today, unfortunately while rolling it into location on machinery skates my concrete floor crumbled and dumped it on its back. luckily no one was hurt and the splash guard caught 99% of the damage, it popped the lid off the gearbox shearing all the m6 bolts, and broke the bolts holding the light to the apron...going over most of the lathe it looks like the luckiest worst cases i could have, going to clean it up real good and hammer the backsplash back out and remount it, then work on electrical for it.... also when going to the store to get large amounts of kitty litter make double sure that they aren't sending big bags of cat food.....
 

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oogenshire said:
jet 1440 came today, unfortunately while rolling it into location on machinery skates my concrete floor crumbled and dumped it on its back. luckily no one was hurt and the splash guard caught 99% of the damage, it popped the lid off the gearbox shearing all the m6 bolts, and broke the bolts holding the light to the apron...going over most of the lathe it looks like the luckiest worst cases i could have, going to clean it up real good and hammer the backsplash back out and remount it, then work on electrical for it.... also when going to the store to get large amounts of kitty litter make double sure that they aren't sending big bags of cat food.....
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that's awful man. was the concrete just thin in that area? how do you know it will hold up in the spot you will have it permanently?
 
yota said:
that's awful man. was the concrete just thin in that area? how do you know it will hold up in the spot you will have it permanently?
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looks like it delaminated around rebar, pretty much going to have to play it by ear, have plate i can put under the lathe if i have to
 
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