My 1942 Gorton vertical mill. I purchased it from Pikes Peak Machine in
Colorado Springs, 1100 miles away. A one-way U-Haul trailer would have been
$350. I cruised around Springs until I found an old boat trailer for sale for
$125. It took a couple of used tires, a coupler, new wheel bearings, and
lights, among other things, but it still came out to less than $350 and I
could keep it when I was done. My buddy Doug in Springs thought the teddy
bear gave the rig some class.
The right rear tire is an original 1950s Atlas Bucron wide whitewall. After
40-odd years it still managed to last through an 1100-mile trip! Try that on
your Firestones... not bad for a tire that was originally guaranteed to last
only five thousand miles.
The Gorton has several unusual features, including built-in X-Y table feed and
left-handed controls. Which is fine, since I'm left-handed. It came from a
vo-tech school, which had painted it a horrible lumpy latex beige that looked
like it had used kitty litter mixed in. The stuff is thick and adheres
tenaciously; I finally gave up. I still have a gallon of polyurethane machine
tool paint to repint it... someday.
The Gorton had resource ID tags on it from the US War Department. It's a war
veteran!
I saw some photos of Mickey Thompson's workshop, circa the mid '60s. Mickey
had a Gorton just like mine. Well, minus the barfalonus paint job. Now, if I
could only build something like his Challenger I or Indy cars with mine...
My 1950s Brown & Sharpe horizontal mill, sitting in the shop where I bought it
in Colorado Springs. It's very heavy duty for such a small mill.
This is a poor shot of my Sioux valve grinder. It's another 1940s refugee.
It probably weighs 400 pounds; we had to stack concrete blocks and slide it
off the tailgate; two of us couldn't lift it. Under all the filth it turned
out to be in fine shape; it was a better deal than I expected when I bought
it.
My block honing tank. The feed store thought it was a horse feeder, the
fools. A big pump, a hose, my Sunnen manual hone, and ten gallons of Diesel
fuel, and I'm set. The 3/4-HP drill has an aluminum stop to prevent stroking
the stones down into the main webs. There are two 1-quart PH-8A oil filters
on the other side, with a bypass valve to control flow to the flood hose. You
can see bypass oil running out the fitting on the upper left of the tank.
It takes a lot more time and work to hone a block with
this than with a Sunnen CK-10, but a CK-10 costs $30,000...
1" steel torque plate. I made this one for 2000cc Ford Pinto engines.
Special vise jaws to grab pistons by the oil ring grooves. I use them for
milling piston tops. I have a couple different sets for different sizes of
pistons.