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When you buy a lathe or mill or similar machine from an estate, generally an eccentric 90 yr old with family not interested in the machines, it always comes with "the box". Sometimes in two or three boxes, sometimes a cabinet full, sometimes a bunch of coffee cans. But it's always there. "The box" is always a mix of scrap, discarded work that has something that went wrong, machine parts for this and other unrelated machines, and tooling. You have to sort through it all, because often there's parts for the machine, good tooling, and sometimes some real gems. When I buy a machine, typically there's $200 to $1500 worth of stuff in "the box". I had a first today. I bought a decent Atlas 10x54 QC lathe for a good price. Had at immediate glance a 3 jaw, 4 jaw, homemade steady rest, 4 way tool holder, a few jacob chucks, face plate, dogs, lantern tool holder and bit holder assortment. Set up and demonstrated to operate correctly. Plus, "the box", piled in a 2 door cabinet and a few cans. I bring it home, and the lathe is all good. Start sorting the extras. 100% unrelated junk. A bunch of MT sleeves, bits, reamers, etc that are too big for the lathe. Broken chucks. Dinged up arbors. A set of change gears for some other lathe. An ancient ridge reamer. Some kind of single operation boring head for who knows what machine. Huge, ancient carbide lathe bits for some monster lathe. Junk that got dredged up out of the dregs of some government or industry surplus auction. All of it. Not $100 worth in the lot. Usually a treasure hunt going through "the box" from a machine. Not today!
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