Welding Tips and Tricks

Just moved and putting together the shop I've not had the space for. Before I go spend any real money, checking Craigslist out for older, cheaper and often better tools and items for the shop. Here's what I scored this week.

1. Anvil, approx. 125lbs, with Hardy and Pritcher holes and custom wood base. 2. Grizzly G0520 Drill / Mill combo. I had not seen this model, and they no longer make it, but wow, the pillar on this, while round is a tree trunk. The thing weighs in at 700+ lbs and has a table with power cross feed. I am very happy I found this for cheap vs. the rebuilt or still decent Bridgeport's I'd been considering.
3.Desmond Stephan & Prentiss vices, large. DS has 9" slide travel, the Prentiss has 12". You can see the relative sizes from the size of the 5 gallon bucket and the slides. The Desmond Stephan needs a repair, which I'll post in another thread. 4. I didn't want to buy a third vice, but this one showed up, and it was manufactured by a company called Simplex or Simplex Cray in the city where I grew up, Woonsocket, RI. Had to have it. It's actually quite nice, though not as big as the others. Next week, I'm scouting compressors and small-ish lathes...
Older Type 30 Ingersoll Rand 60 or 80 gal units are on the top of my list, especially since you can buy full rebuild kits for them.

For lathes, I'm looking at units with a bed up to 30" but not less than 24" working with a 9" min swing. Obvious choices are older Southbend units, but I'm keeping my eyes open.

Anyhow, that's my take for the last two weeks. Probably going to bead blast, re-paint and lube/grease them all.
I'm pretty happy with them.

Good stuff.

I like how you said that this isn't real money. This stuff would be about 5 years of purchases for me. (In a perfect world)

Fair point Mike.
That said, I'm not made of money, it is just that I've been saving for when I finally
had a place to call my shop.
No garage and Children's toys, art supplies, etc... which
Grow to fill every available void have prevented this
Until now.

I'm slowly aquiring a resonalble amount of bibs and bobs. It shows up on Ebay/Gumtree, sometimes you get it sometimes you don't

You're going to appreciate that smaller vice. You just haven't seen how, yet. One of my favorite tools at work is a small vice intended for a mill table. It has small horizontal and vertical v-grooves in the (very precise) jaws that make certain tasks much easier. It's completely portable, and can be clamped to a table for more aggressive use. We also have a Harbor Freight cheapo that I use copper jaws in for work I can't "scratch and dent". It's a perfect fit for some tasks I have.

Great scores!

Steve S