To start with I thought I would share my vertical milling machine. It is an Elliott Milmor Super 16. Made by the Victoria machine tool company to compete with the Bridgeport series 1, it is a little bit beefier with box ways and weights about 300kg more than the Bridgeport. It has a backgear on the spindle and 4 steps on the pulley, combined with a 2 speed motor giving 16 speeds, hence super 16.
Mine is pretty worn out but for hobby duties it is all the machine I will ever need and then some. It has a few issues that one day I might fix, the 3 main ones being:
1: The Gib on the Y axis has run out of adjustment and needs shimming
2: The head tilt worm gear is stripped. Are there off the shelf worm gears available if I find out the pitch? if you know let me know!
3: It has mega backlash on the X axis
I ended up snapping this machine up for $1000, which in the local market is a bargain. I think I managed to get it for that price because it was listed on facebook in amongst an estate lot with poorly lit photos in a dirt floor shed. I went and had a look, it was filthy and rusty but a solid looking machine so I bought it.
At the time I had not finished building my shed so I went out with a local scrap hauler with his hiab to pick it up and moved it into the carport until I had finished building the shed. Once the shed was done I had to get him back to pick the machines up and plonk them in the doorway of the shed
Well, I don’t have anything worth taking pictures of but I have always wanted a shaper - for absolutely no good reason at all, other than watching it chug away at a piece of metal.
This was my first mill, it is a 1976 Bridgeport Series 1 with a Variable speed 2J head and a 3hp motor. It has a factory Bridgeport Shaping head on the backside of the ram. This mill came out of a shop that used to make prototype parts for Fox Shox automotive division. Its certainly been used and could use a little love, but overall it does what I need and if necessary can make accurate parts.
This is a 1909 Brown and Shape model 1 1/2. It is an absolute beast of a machine, weighing in at around 4000lbs. This machine does all of my maintube mitering as well as chainstay mitering for the dropout end. I am told this mill was originally in use at Ibis though I can’t confirm this. It did have a Paragon arbor modded into a makeshift collet as well as a bunch of tube miter drops all over it, so the story is plausible.
This is a 1986 RoundTower clone of a step pulley series 1 Bridgeport. Its a bit of a hybrid machine as it has a much heavier base than the step pulley machines had. This machine spent it’s entire life in a hobbyist’s garage and is a very tight and accurate machine. It serves general purpose work around the shop.
The lathe in the shop is a 13x40 Enco gun smithing lathe. It has a large through bore and is very well suited to the needs of bicycle fabrication. This machine was saved from the scrapper after the spindle nut backed itself off and the spindle bound up. It was offered to me and after about 20 minutes I was able to get it back up and running. It does have some strange modifications but overall is a very functional and useful machine.
I rent a corner within a metal workshop. The owner teach welding . But he is a bit of a messy guy. We agreed on a low rent, so he could use my machines and I can use his machines (lathe, drill press, etc.)
First one is a nice small Swiss horizontal mill by schaffner. It runs real nice. But most the time it’s full with the other guy his stuff.
I also have a adcock and Shipley mill. It’s set up horizontally. It came with a vertical head, but the working space was small.
I use it now for mitering all my tubes.
And I have a service plate/table
I am still setting up, but last weekend I bought a 1943 Leblond Regal 13x30 lathe. I bought it from a professional machinist (this was his home lathe before he upgraded) so it’s in amazing shape, and it came with a 3-jaw, 4-jaw and 5C collet chucks.
I also bought a Webb knee mill, but it’s in storage until I can get enough room to set it up.
I welded some giant skates/dollies and bolted the lathe down to them, and it made moving the lathe wonderfully unexciting. The hardest part was raising up each side of the base to get the skates underneath. I spent a couple days brainstorming how to move it and the wide base dollies seemed like a low-cost method/high-payoff method.
That would be super cool if you did have one of Scot’s machines. I showed him your photo of the machine and he said he honestly doesn’t remember if he had that one. He said he thinks he had 2 or 3 Brown and Sharpes and shared a few photos of his machines which include two of his B&S machines, but I don’t believe these ones are yours.
I especially like this one with bike tree in progress:
Those were the photos I was able to find as well, one of the Browne and Sharpe mills in the photos looks to be a later model, likely #2 vertical. The other looks to be the same age as mine but a different configuration. The one I have was originally set up for a line drive system, the electric motor is a retrofit from much later but the drive system is entirely housed in the column.
