Why is the good stuff so expensive?

[projectnut]

About 5 yrs ago I took an adult ed class, it got the point, where I brought my own lathe tools and end mills to class, as what they had was well past it’s expiration date. 3 months later, they shipped to mills and lathes off to another JC in the system and deleted the class from the ciriculum.

We went through the same thing here about 30 years ago. Before then our local technical college had an outstanding department for learning just about any machining skill known to man. They had state of the art shops and an excellent apprentice program. Somewhere along the way someone convinced them machining was going by the way similar to the fate of the blacksmith. They pretty much let everything deteriorate, stopped the apprentice programs, and abandoned everything they had been doing for 50 years.

That wasn't such a good idea. There's a huge number of production and job shops around here, and as the baby boomers started to age out there were no replacements. The local shops started screaming they needed qualified help and there was none to be had.

In the early 2000's the light finally went on and the programs started getting rebuilt. By 2010 the shops had been reoutfitted, the apprentice program restarted, and a dozen highly qualified instructors had been hired. Today there are 4 huge shops with over 200 pieces of manual and state of the art CNC machinery. All the machines are either new or in like new condition. The shop I had a class in was equipped with 12 different surface grinders, the same number of new Bridgeport mills, 10 manual lathes, 6 horizontal milling machines, 4 HAAS vertical CNC mills, internal and external grinders, and countless other pieces of support equipment like drill presses, pedestal grinders, optical comparators, surface plates and metrology tools. With that many large pieces of equipment they have contracts with local shops to rebuild and refurbish machinery every summer.

Now days all the classes are full every semester, and there's a waiting list.

 

[Janderso]

I share your concern about counterfeits on Ebay, but I've been lucky (or clueless) in my purchases. That being said, I've purchased most of my cutting tools used from retired/expired machinists. I found one guy in Lafayette that was recently retired from Berkeley Livermore Lab (where Tom Lipton works I think?) on CL and bought a bunch of top quality, genuine stuff (Niagra cutters, etc.) I didn't get a screaming deal (20% - 50% of new prices), but I think fair and they work great.

Speaking of Tom Lipton and the Berkeley Lab.
One of Tom's apprentices had an old Bridgeport he bought from the lab. He kept it at his dad's house in Shingletown, CA.
I met the apprentice on a Saturday morning in Shingletown, checked out the mill and bought it. It was worn out but I didn't know it. I paid $1,000.
I learned quite a bit on that old worn out BP. Lost it in the fire. Now I have a much better clone.

 

[ACHiPo]

Speaking of Tom Lipton and the Berkeley Lab.
One of Tom's apprentices had an old Bridgeport he bought from the lab. He kept it at his dad's house in Shingletown, CA.
I met the apprentice on a Saturday morning in Shingletown, checked out the mill and bought it. It was worn out but I didn't know it. I paid $1,000.
I learned quite a bit on that old worn out BP. Lost it in the fire. Now I have a much better clone.

Jeff,
I talked to the guy a few months ago and he still had tooling available. Let me know if you're interested and I'll get you the contact info.

Evan

 

[Janderso]

Thank you Evan,
I'm in a good place, tooling wise.