- Joined
- Sep 4, 2013
- Messages
- 99
I have a 1978 Enco GL30B that has a bed that looks exactly like the one you have installed. If you are still looking for someone to give it to, I would love to have it. At 72, cranking can get tiring!
The only funny story I have is about a machine shop where one of the machinists had for some reason decided to do a job on a small lathe and ran it backwards with the toolholder on the back with the tool upside down. It was a pretty complicated part with several precision dimensions and when the piece was completed, he started to part it off, perhaps a little too quickly. The chuck unscrewed from the headstock and went spinning across the shop floor like a wayward cannonball! That chuck with the part firmly grasped in its jaws, ricocheted off of a couple of pieces of heavy duty equipment-Like a Kerny and Trecker horizontal mill- and seemed to chase a couple of other machinists before coming to a stop. The machinist had been a pretty quiet guy, but the shop foreman said he was amazed at his vocabulary which he used like he had used it all his life. He said the last time he had heard anything even close was when he was in the marines. The machinist put the very battered part in his toolbox and never ran a lathe backwards again.
When I worked at Kaiser Aluminum, they had an old German machinist who seemed to catch all of the high precision work. But the interesting thing was he could use some of the oldest sloppy machines and turn out work that was old world beautiful and perfectly on dimension. They had a lathe that had been converted from an overhead belt drive to electric and was past worn out, but he could make beautiful parts on it. In conversation with him one day, he said that he really didn't make the parts, the machine did that, but he was just there to help it out.
Frank Duncan
The only funny story I have is about a machine shop where one of the machinists had for some reason decided to do a job on a small lathe and ran it backwards with the toolholder on the back with the tool upside down. It was a pretty complicated part with several precision dimensions and when the piece was completed, he started to part it off, perhaps a little too quickly. The chuck unscrewed from the headstock and went spinning across the shop floor like a wayward cannonball! That chuck with the part firmly grasped in its jaws, ricocheted off of a couple of pieces of heavy duty equipment-Like a Kerny and Trecker horizontal mill- and seemed to chase a couple of other machinists before coming to a stop. The machinist had been a pretty quiet guy, but the shop foreman said he was amazed at his vocabulary which he used like he had used it all his life. He said the last time he had heard anything even close was when he was in the marines. The machinist put the very battered part in his toolbox and never ran a lathe backwards again.
When I worked at Kaiser Aluminum, they had an old German machinist who seemed to catch all of the high precision work. But the interesting thing was he could use some of the oldest sloppy machines and turn out work that was old world beautiful and perfectly on dimension. They had a lathe that had been converted from an overhead belt drive to electric and was past worn out, but he could make beautiful parts on it. In conversation with him one day, he said that he really didn't make the parts, the machine did that, but he was just there to help it out.
Frank Duncan
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