This Old Bridgeport

Just look at  this hot mess. Obviously, the handle kept falling off and since no Loc-tite was available, let's just weld that bad boy on! Since it can't be disassembled, the weld was ground away and unscrewed, allowing the quill lock to be removed. An eBay purchase solved the problem of the damaged handle and the poor design of Bridgeport which allowed gravity to always cause the handle to move downward, locking the quill. Some hold it up with a rubber band or make a left-hand thread and move the stock handle to the back, but this solution works well for me.

 The mill had an AL-500S Power Feed, but I was told it did not work, but was handed a new brass beveled gear for it. "This should fix it." They had cut the power plug off so that it could not be used, so I attached a 110V plug and sure enough, the motor would not run. However, the lever felt loose and sloppy to me and some attention with a hex wrench determined that the set screw was just loose. When tightened and adjusted correctly, the power feed worked just fine as did the limit switch. Now I have a spare brass gear.

 Hesitant to start tearing the machine apart and afraid of what work it might need, I decided to start work on the vise. Obviously abused, I spent a lot of time digging rusty swarf out of th4 vise. They used lots of water-based coolant and never cleaned the chips. Cleaned up, but not so pretty. While it is a Kurt-style vise, it was definitely not a Kurt, but pretty solid considering the abuse and neglect it had seen. There was a groove cut in the bed just in front of the fixed head, making it impossible to place a parallel there. The solution? Just add a second jaw, covering up the groove. That will do for now. Some paint and a handle, and I'm good to go for now. I also got a re-build kit form Kurt and replaced the provided parts.

 It was obvious that the motor had been replaced. After all, it was clean and nicely painted and the leads looked brand new. Nice to see that it could be configured for 220V 3-phase as well. I have 220V, 3-phase available at my workshop. Why is it dangerous?

 As found, the mill was not under power but had been represented as "working". It had been wired for 440 volts, 3-phase. It had only a little tooling. A vise, some collets, an incomplete set of hold-down clamps and a plexiglass shield. This appeared to work well. No vise handle was available, "We just use a wrench." Several missing pieces and, while dirty, not a lot of use on what was present. I removed the vise and was presented with a lot of rusty swarf in the T-slots. I scraped out a lot of the swarf and left it in their collection bin. I removed the handles and power feed and tilted the head in preparation for transport. Obviously not a lot of wear on the Y-axis.

 I live in an area that is a machine tool desert, not because there are no machine shops, but because there are plenty of them, almost all busy with government or maritime work. As such, older manual machines are either kept in production, worn out, or quickly acquired. So I was surprised when a local auction for a Bridgeport milling machine popped up.  The machine was located in Hampton, VA at a company that manufactured warehouse conveyor systems, FMH Conveyors Inc . They had been acquired by a larger company and all manufacturing was being moved to another site and the few machines they had were being auctioned off. The machine is S/N 140293 which, according to this table , puts its date of manufacture in 1971. The J-head S/N is 143884, which is not a number used to date the machine. Originally sold by Jeffrey's Manufacturing , I was told that the machine's first owner was located not far from the FMH Conveyors site, had become surplus and sat outside for some time before be