I rebuilt this 1962 Nichols horizontal mill (http://www.docsmachine.com/machineshop/nichols-completed-3.jpg) that had been through at least three production factories, including US Drill, and wound up rusting away in an unheated connex up here in Alaska.

Now it’s one of the most-used tools in the shop.

This month’s project is an even older 1909-ish Rockford drill press: http://www.docsmachine.com/machineshop/rockford08.jpg

Doc.

This one pictured seems to have been in a fire.

We still have lots of old machinery in our shops. If we were really a mass production outfit - we’d probably would have converted long ago to NC routers etc. in our cabinet/wood shop but for now we make do with table saws, shapers etc. I’ll match our old Oliver inline rip saw to most anything thats out there now. And - in our plumbing shop - I think our old Oster threading machine is the equal if not better than the newer Ridgid and Reed equipment we carry on our larger trucks. Making some of the old stuff come up to modern OSHA compliance takes a bit of doing - sheetmetal guards, rewired stop buttons etc. - you need to judge if it is worth the effort. For the older machinery that we’ve kept running - we obviously thought thet the trade-off was worth it.