Bridgeport Series 1 J2
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