My new toy a 1942 Bridgeport M-head Round-Ram Vertical Mill

First off, a HUGE thanks to A_Pmech for all of his help. Also a thanks to OldCarGuy for his input on machine selection.

I saw this on an online auction. It caught my eye as I wanted to get into machining, but I don't have a ton of cash. This machine is a 1942 M-head Bridgeport. It is also single phase, so no conversion was required. I bought it from the original owner! The man is 93 and is no longer able to continue in his shop. I got some other tools from him as well. It is an honor to own tools that have been so meticulously cared after by one guy.

It has the original, unharmed Bridgeport vise, power feed, and an indexing head. Total cost with rigging/lumber/diesel/mill/tooling was ~$800

Here is the transport procedure. Hindsight is always 20-20. However, the mill is safe in my garage. All ~1800lbs.

I started by making a wooden Gantry. It was designed to lift 2000lbs with a comfortable factor of design.



Due to space restrictions in the man's shop there was no way to use the gantry. Fortunately, the other guys buying stuff had an engine crane.

Three and a half hours in we had moved ten feet.


Then I hooked the hoist to the trailer front and winched it in (or rather my dad and I did)


I wrapped two straps on either side of the base to prevent any undue net lateral force on the knee raising mechanism. It was probably not needed at all. Only one is shown here. The loop on the left is the other. The dolly was supposed be placed the other way, but we could not get it on the proper way. I was not worried despite the severe flex. This dolly would have touched the ground before it broke.



It worked! Five hours from when we showed up!


The bandsaw was a very pleasant surprise. It is in very nice shape. It is in the 600lbs range. Oddly, it seemed light after the mill.

Then we unloaded the mill into my garage in the pouring rain. The mill was a bit hard to move all covered in Tyvek, but unloading was far easier.



We then used the gantry to lift it off of the dolly and set it on the ground.

Home!:



After a couple days, A_Pmech decided to come give me a crash course in milling. He drove several hours and brought some tooling with him. He also brought me a few bands for the bandsaw.

Here we are making chips!




John works the BP like Mario Andretti drives a car. I'm a like 15yo kid with a learner's permit. However, I benefited greatly from having instruction, and strive to improve.

And that concludes what has happened so far.

Thanks again John!

Awesome! Congrats on the machine. I think you're going to have a ton of fun with that. If there was a jealous smiley you'd be getting it!

Congrats on your "new" machine, if it is a 1942 and the guy is the original owner, there HAS to be a story there. You could not just buy a machine tool in 1942 unless you had something to do with war production.

That was very nice of John to make a trip and bring goodies to boot, we have some very talented and generous people on the forum.

This collecting old iron is a sickness that only gets worse, be prepared to adopt a few more big lumps.

Steve

Nice Machine ! I remember the adventure bringing mine home from Detroit . You sure had a good teacher showing you the ropes of the Bridgeport. Let us know what your looking for tooling wise and i can keep an eye out for sale's around here

At 15 you are one lucky kid (and you have a great dad)! Congrats on finding the mill and the saw. As you become more familiar with it you will find lots of uses.

Dale

One fantastic find. I'm sure its got decades of service left. Congradulations on finding and giving this timeless piece a home. I know you will use it often and take care of it. Good luck

Now thats cool stuff

Thanks guys.

The original owner was war-exempt due to his machining abilities. He made parts for airplanes to equip the guys on the front lines. A very noble cause for a machinist!

I'm 21 btw. I was comparing machining abilities by comparing Mario Andretti to a kid with a permit. It resides in the garage of my house.

Do I look like I'm 15? Wait, maybe I don't want the answer.

Good Stuff. After about 10 lines of your post I figured out you were an engineer. Most people don't work "net lateral force" into their daily conversations.

Awesome score though! I second whoever suggested there was a story behind this mill. Any guy who has owned a mill for the last 68 years has probably done some pretty interesting stuff with it, and due to its age, there is probably some WW2 history involved.

Ya, the engineer lingo gets rammed into your head.

mjozefow said:

Thanks guys.


I'm 21 btw. I was comparing machining abilities by comparing Mario Andretti to a kid with a permit. It resides in the garage of my house.

Do I look like I'm 15? Wait, maybe I don't want the answer.

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Ha! I guess I didn't read your first post close enough. And no, you don't look 15, but a lot of things aren't as they seem anymore. I've seen some kids in college that look like they should be in 7th grade. Maybe that means I'm getting old?

Anyhow, great find, and I wish you luck getting up to speed on using your new mill. If you're like me, then soon you will be wanting a lot of tooling and accessories to go with it.

Dale

That is great. Nice group effort and it is nice to see how our community is always ready to lend a hand.

All's well that ends well, I guess, - but that plywood dolly makes my hair stand on end. It's already bowed under the weight of that machine, if it even cracked it could shift the balance of that mill enough to make you have a very bad day.

As I said, I designed it to go the other way (90* rotation). However, the dolly was nowhere near the breaking point. The bottom would have touched before it truly broke.

Mitch sent me a PM a couple weeks ago about this machine asking me for my opinion. Initially, I wanted to see what his expectations were regarding a milling machine. After all, this machine was going on 70 years old. What I wasn't prepared for was the level to which the original and only owner took care of the machine. It had been rebuilt at some point in the not too distant past by the owner. I was surprised to find it had new screws in both X and Y, judging by the constant backlash figures from one end of the screws to the other.

The original owner made a lot of tooling for this machine on a small tool and cutter grinder in his shop. Part of this was due to the limited spindle capacity of the M-head, which uses #2 Morse Taper collets. Things I specifically remember are:

A small boring head designed to clamp on the outside of the spindle.

A small fly cutter, also designed to clamp on the outside of the spindle.

An edgefinder, which worked exceedingly well with a nice clean "kick".

NUMEROUS parallels.

Many, MANY other odds and ends. Needless to say, the machine came well-tooled. The machine vise, a Bridgeport brand swivel vise, looked new!

On Monday, we concentrated on bandsaw practice to rough out a square of aluminum. With a small machine like a Bridgeport, having a vertical band saw to rough stock to size saves a LOT of machine time. Bridgeports and vertical saws go together well in the shop and his Walker Turner is in excellent shape!

After sawing out a block, we moved over to the Bridgeport. We spent quite a bit of time discussing what all the levers and wheels did, along with lubrication, changing speeds, tramming the head, how to use the handwheels, power feed and zero the dials, along with other Bridgeport practices.

Then, we got down to making chips. We practiced squaring up the block, finding zero in Z, locating edges in X and Y and many other things. The result was a perfectly square block of aluminum about 1.25" x 1.125" x .690" with a .500" x .650" shoulder.

After some basic instruction, Mitch was easily hitting inside +- .0015". Great work for a 70 year old machine and 2 hours of instruction! Mitch has an eye for detail which will serve him well in machining, he trammed the machine BY EYE to within .015" TIR in a 6" radius! All I had to do was give it a couple light taps to bring the head square.

Thanks again Mitch for the great food and hospitality. Enjoy your new capabilities!

Oh...

You're soon going to learn NOT to wear white shirts when operating an M-head that is oiling properly.

mjozefow said:

However, the dolly was nowhere near the breaking point. The bottom would have touched before it truly broke.

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All that's based only on your assumptions, which at 21 don't have a lot of experience behind them. I'm not criticizing your age, just adding the perspective I've gained in the additional 29 years since I was 21...

Being a little sloppy loading a barbecue grille you're hauling home from WalMart is one thing... being a little sloppy loading and rigging heavy machinery can get you badly hurt or killed. You got it done this time - but the point I'm trying to make is that your solution was dangerous, and I wouldn't want anyone to use your success with that as any indication that it was a good idea.

That said, enjoy your mill! You're off to a good start with a nice piece of machinery like that.

This post reminds me of the adventures I had unloading my Tree mill. My engine hoist will never be the same. An engineer with a Bridgeport can do wonderful things.

You let A_Pmech near your mill? Just kidding obviously and jealously. Both you guys should move close to Chicago and make your machines and talents available to me.

Zrexxer said:

All that's based only on your assumptions, which at 21 don't have a lot of experience behind them. I'm not criticizing your age, just adding the perspective I've gained in the additional 29 years since I was 21...

Being a little sloppy loading a barbecue grille you're hauling home from WalMart is one thing... being a little sloppy loading and rigging heavy machinery can get you badly hurt or killed. You got it done this time - but the point I'm trying to make is that your solution was dangerous, and I wouldn't want anyone to use your success with that as any indication that it was a good idea.

That said, enjoy your mill! You're off to a good start with a nice piece of machinery like that.

Click to expand...

I would agree...mostly. The dolly was tested with ~4000lbs of point load before it was used for the mill. The entire front end of my truck (Cummins diesel) placed on one point of the dolly via a floor jack pushing up on the front axle until the wheels barely came up. This almost made the middle of the dolly touch the ground. It never even groaned.

As I said, the dolly was supposed to be rotated 90 degrees which would have induced much less flex.

I would not recommend anyone use any method I used. It was a lot of work. Hire a rigger and take all the work out of it. It only costs an additional 600 bucks. Or buy a suitable engine hoist. The small ones won't work though, so it would have to be a $300+ unit. Or rent a forklift and trailer for $300+ a day and come to the conclusion that it will neither go up your driveway, nor fit into the old man's shop, nor clear your garage door. Also keep in mind there is a 2" steel lip at the opening of his garage door. So nothing on wheels could get over the lip with three quarters of a ton of weight.

I had to improvise and adapt. There were a large number of variables. If the machine had been in a huge warehouse, the wooden gantry would have put it right up on the dolly in the proper orientation and it would have been smooth as silk. For some reason these things don't usually work out like that for me.

What I DO have is common sense. I tested all my equipment to twice the anticipated load, ran many calculations, and stayed the hell out of the way! If at any point it fell, it would not have hit a person, as no one was ever in the fall path. This is my first machine tool, not the first heavy-enough-to-crush-a-person thing I have rigged. Was it SAFE? No. Were precautions taken to make it as safe as possible? Yes. Did it HAVE to be moved that day? Yes.

I really do appreciate the concern Zrexxer, I know you just don't want to see me killed.

A_Pmech said:

Oh...

You're soon going to learn NOT to wear white shirts when operating an M-head that is oiling properly.

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I already have! I had a nice line across my shirt yesterday.

Thanks again John!

For future reference; a tilt bed car hauler is a great way to move machines either local or from a hard to get to location on to a trailer.

Steve

Steve in SoCal said:

For future reference; a tilt bed car hauler is a great way to move machines either local or from a hard to get to location on to a trailer.

Steve

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I agree. However, funds are limited, and it was 140 miles round trip.

I have to applaud both of you guys for sharing your finds and knowledge with everyone. For A_Pmech to provide invaluable tutoring is very commendable.

There's still some good in this world!

Now... can you make me some new jaws for my Wilton vise? (You knew that was coming, right?)

-Mike

That's cool. Playing with a good bridgeport will make you almost want to quit your regular job for it. I have a 1956 J head myself and have gotten a lot of use out of it. You'll find things to do with it that you didn't even think to have in mind when you got it. I had to enlarge the centers of some wheels for my pickup truck for instance.

Congrats on your new Mill. I'm jealous!!!

My observation has been that the tooling usually costs as much as the mill, So you really made out great.

I keep an apron without pockets next to my Lathe so I can use it no matter what I am wearing. Pockets collect chips.

Chris

I was wondering how long it was going to take you to post your new toys...I saw you were bidding on them and if I was in a better position time wise, I was going to jump in the bidding pretty strong and give my South Bend a new buddy. I'm definitely glad that someone from this site got it and some of the other toys. I guess now I know all I have to do is to run up to Lafayette to get some machining done!

BTG said:

I was wondering how long it was going to take you to post your new toys...I saw you were bidding on them and if I was in a better position time wise, I was going to jump in the bidding pretty strong and give my South Bend a new buddy. I'm definitely glad that someone from this site got it and some of the other toys. I guess now I know all I have to do is to run up to Lafayette to get some machining done!

Click to expand...

Swing on by sometime!