It was another unclehenrys ad. I had sworn off them,.having been - I paranoically imagined, somewhat chided for having machines sitting in the mud. (Hey! Beats the hell out of the living room.) I glanced at the ads, copied a few out, fed them onto the oldww thread and felt a bit smug about all the bargains I was leaving for the other bottom feeding souls of the snowy northeast. Then somebody writes me; he says I should have at least looked at the $25 deltoid drill press. I know his kind; they try to shame you into action. Let's not mention names. Let's just say there's a gang of them somewhere near 'beertown'. I call them the "Bunghole Auger Boyz'. They're a bad lot - they like grey - yikes!
I thought, what the hell, and went ahead and called about the babbitt burning stove with accoutrements. Guy wanted $125. "Long way to drive when it's more than I will pay,"" I told him. "How about $75?" He called me a dirty dog and agreed. I was off on another 75 mile jaunt into the wilds of rural Maine. Got there and the stove looked like a keeper; so did the small and large ladle and the 3 sizes of pots. Even had about 7# of no. 3 babbitt mixed in with many pounds of unkown metals. My eyes wandered up in the darkened shed. Like a lovely woman with outstretched arms, just behind the stove, stood a wonderful grinder. My resolve ebbed. I leaned toward it. "How much?" I whispered. "Another $75." I replied, "I'll take it."
As luck would have it I had brought Honky, the little white Kia Sportage. No way Honky is gonna haul the madonna. When I come back in a couple of days in Thomas, the v10 p/u, the guy talks me into just one more little purchase. How could I say no? "What the hell is it?" I ask him. He shrugs. I know deep in my heart what it is: a $25 paperweight. But I like this guy, and I think we will do more business down the line. He goes all over buying tools and reselling them at good prices. Nice.
Google doesn't give me a single hit on Patch & Swift. Another of the thousands of companies that went south and left no records.
Right is the lovely lady herself. If you can't get a feel for size, the base is 16" dia. and to the arbor is about 30" up. Main thing missing, only thing?, is the tool rest. Doesn't look like it would be too hard to fab one up - as soon as I have some metalhead tools.
Last year at a small livestock auction I saw a rusty piece I immediately dubbed the world's most dangerous table saw. Here it is cleaned, painted and the blade taken off. According to the motor tag it is a Rotarex Bench Grinder. I have considered making a disc sander out of it. But for $2 I may just let is sit while I ponder its fate.
And now for the odd lot. I have no idea what it is. The pictures pretty much tell all. One guess given by a looker was that it wound motors. The tapered and threaded ends are not the same. And the flat belt drum on the left is an idler. The handle on the front simply pushes the belt from the drive drum to the idler. That rather shaggy view bottom right is the underside of the clutch.
Anybody want to guess what Don bought?
Flat belts and babbitts seems to be the new theme. Soon I'll be seen shopping for line shaft assemblies.
Ok, found out what the above is almost immediately on the oldmachine-knowledge-thread
and just haven't gotten around to posting the answer until now, weeks later. It is a buffer. The tapered shaft-ends are righthand thread on one side and left on the other. The buffing wheels have soft centers and simply screw themselves on tight with the arbor's rotation. It is a quick-change system in that once the machine is dropped into neutral either wheel can be spun off by hand without tools. The machines are still made, but of course, not out of cast iron. Quality has fled.
