I'm afraid some tooling has followed me home...

[mars-red]

Got a call from a good buddy of mine saying he was getting out of metal machining and he wanted to give me first refusal on some of his stuff he thought I might be able to use. He's always got crazy, interesting stuff. I headed to his place "tout suite", so to speak, specifically interested in a set of 24 dp gear cutters (the pitch needed for Rivett change gears) and a Hamilton sensitive drill press. Well, the drill press wasn't exactly what I was thinking, true enough it was a sensitive drill press, but it was also built like a tank and had a base so large that I just wouldn't have a place to put it. I had to pass on that. I knew he had this really nice little Burke dividing head, he had mentioned he'd be listing it on e-bay... turns out he was happy for it to fall into my hands so I finally have a dividing head of suitable size for the mini mill. As you can see in the pic, a lot of other random stuff jumped into my car too. The cast iron square angle plate will be especially useful if it cleans up as well as I think it will, and I'll get immediate use from the adjustable angle plate for a few operations during the Trent pinion mill build. The large I-beam style parallels looked like good candidates for turning into small straight-edges. The miniature arbor press might prove to be pretty useful for some stuff I do, but if nothing else it was just too cute to leave behind, and is well made.

It was a great day, getting a few hours to catch up with my buddy, and scoring some much-appreciated tooling. Fortunately it's not circumstance forcing him to get rid of the stuff, but his choice to free up space and money for other endeavors.

Here's a pic of everything:

[boslab]

Looks like a nice haul, but I bet you're going to have another go, I just know it, we are all afflicted with the same strange disease, but it seems your friend has found a cure, poor guy
Mark

[Toolguy]

That's a pretty nice pile of tooling! I know you will enjoy it for years to come.

[J Tiers]

You must be over your bandwidth limit.... the pic is just a big red ball with a "dash" in it.

[Sparky_NY]

You must be over your bandwidth limit.... the pic is just a big red ball with a "dash" in it.

Same here

[mars-red]

You must be over your bandwidth limit.... the pic is just a big red ball with a "dash" in it.

Nothing to do with me, that's Google Photos (formerly Picasa). Couldn't say what's going on there.

EDIT: I could reproduce the same, in a different browser not logged into Google+. I re-generated the share url and noticed the image url was different after that... that URL seems to work properly so I updated the original post.

[Mcgyver]

nice, lots of goodies there. Sorry to hear about your friend, it must be a terrible ailment he's suffering from lol (jeez after writing that I hope its not really the case!)

[J Tiers]

I see it now.

You don't even want to know what they charge for similar little presses used for assembling connectors onto ribbon cable... "specialty" costs money. I just use the 1 ton, and don't pull very hard.....

Nice stack of gear cutters. I have a bunch of them, but not all in useful DPs, so I never seem to have the ones I want. A full set is good. Looks like you got some circuit board drills. Is that a motor and speed control in back?

BTW, if those files are what they look like, they are REALLY nice. Amazing how easy things are with a really nice file for fine work instead of some crap from an american or chinese maker.

[mars-red]

nice, lots of goodies there. Sorry to hear about your friend, it must be a terrible ailment he's suffering from lol (jeez after writing that I hope its not really the case!)

Haha no nothing like that, he's simply suffering from want-to-focus-on-woodworking-itis. Actually now that I think about it, that is pretty dire.

I see it now.

You don't even want to know what they charge for similar little presses used for assembling connectors onto ribbon cable... "specialty" costs money. I just use the 1 ton, and don't pull very hard.....

Nice stack of gear cutters. I have a bunch of them, but not all in useful DPs, so I never seem to have the ones I want. A full set is good. Looks like you got some circuit board drills. Is that a motor and speed control in back?

BTW, if those files are what they look like, they are REALLY nice. Amazing how easy things are with a really nice file for fine work instead of some crap from an american or chinese maker.

Well spotted, on the drills and speed control and files. The drills, I'm not sure if these are what you'd call circuit board drills but they are carbide twist drills in sizes down to 0.010" and all have 1/8" shanks. They are commonly used in modern watchmaking, having gained favor over the traditional spade drills for many uses. The spade drills, though, I have seen down to 0.004" - I'm not sure if the twist drills get that small. To go along with the tiny drills, that little keyless drill chuck you see is mounted on a finger feed spindle for ultra sensitive drilling - the ring that protrudes just above the chuck has a nice bearing, and the shank is a telescoping spring loaded arrangement.

The motor is a Bodine (Bodine motors and controllers seem to be beating down my door lately!), and from the old-timey appearance of the tag it seems to be a rather old one. It clearly had some special purpose, judging by the knurled arbor on the shaft. The controller is a really nice Minarik reversing, variable speed unit. It seems to be more than a simple PWM controller, as it's very torquey even at low speeds. PWM with load-sensing feedback of some kind, I suppose. My thought was to use it on the Trent pinion mill I'm building.

The files, as you supposed, are Grobet. I have a few loose Vallorbe and Grobet files that I got used, and they really are fantastic. For "beater" use I like to have Chinese needle files and those cheap Nicholson single cut files kicking around. A good number of times I've ground them for special purposes and I especially like the cheap ones for that. This set I got in the photo appears to be totally unused, and I'm sure will still be in great condition when the kids inherit my shop. It's always been my opinion that there's precious little you can't do with a lathe and a good set of files (and some ingenuity, of course). In the handful of years I've been doing this, I've already worn out several brand new Nicholson files, but those used Swiss and English files I got at auctions are still every bit as good as the day I got them.

[Jaakko Fagerlund]

Seems that others have missed one obvious thing, but here it goes: you suck :P

Nice haul indeed, the dividing head would've been a nice addition.

[Toolguy]

I'm surprised no one mentioned the hand feed drill chuck. That alone would have been suckworthy!

[mars-red]

Seems that others have missed one obvious thing, but here it goes: you suck [emoji14]

Nice haul indeed, the dividing head would've been a nice addition.

Haha I was wondering how long it would take for that.

Sent from my BLN-L24 using Tapatalk

[Highpower]

Some guys have all the luck.

And you know what rhymes with luck.....

[MattiJ]

Well spotted, on the drills and speed control and files. The drills, I'm not sure if these are what you'd call circuit board drills but they are carbide twist drills in sizes down to 0.010" and all have 1/8" shanks. They are commonly used in modern watchmaking, having gained favor over the traditional spade drills for many uses. The spade drills, though, I have seen down to 0.004" - I'm not sure if the twist drills get that small.

Jerry is got it right that those are pcb drills. Also good for lot of other materials, anything between plastic and hardened tool steels as long as you have good enough spindle.
Sizes go down to 0.004" indeed:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1-set-DIY-10Pcs-0-1mm-1-0-mm-PCB-Print-Circuit-Board-Carbide-Micro-Drill/32365211029.html?spm=2114.40010208.4.68.jgunSb

Other than that: you suck

[Dan_the_Chemist]

If you are "Afraid" that the tooling followed you home, then -

1) Breath deeply. You have friends
2) Approach the tools slowly, but without letting them sense your fear. Whistling a tune might help.
3) Slowly, one at a time pick each tool, and transfer it to a box.
4) Once all the tools are in the box, carry it outside and put it on your front porch (under cover)
5) I'll be over ASAP to take that box of frightening tools away

See... no need to be afraid. Just call me. I'm here for you buddy...

Any other tools you are afraid of? I can bring a truck if your fear is really great.