Michael:
I agree with you on the difference in the design and "feel" of common items we use in all aspects of life. I have a 1965 Gravely Model L "walk behind" tractor. It has a Gravely-built engine, cast iron trans-axle, full pressure lubrication system, and all geared drive. Using planetaries, it is a shift on the fly system. I use it to run a 30" bush hog mower deck, gear driven. It takes down small saplings. I also run an open snow blower with it, made of steel plate, massive, with the gearcase for the auger running in a cast iron gearcase. The auger shaft runs on two large common pillow block bearings. This style of snow blower is affectionately called "the dog eater" by Gravely aficionados. My other tractor is a 1979 Yanmar 195 D. 19 HP at 2100 rpm, two cylinder diesel with wet sleeve liners, all geared drive (no hydrostatics). It weighs about 1 ton, four wheel drive, and pushes a 5 ft moldboard earth/snpw blade. I have a boom pole for it and it is one handy little beast for moving stuff around.
My machine tools are all uniformly old. I think the most recent machine tool in my shop is the Bridgeport, which is a 1972 machine. I have a Cinncinnati-Bickford 25" camelback drill, with factory motor drive. It is likely a WWI era machine tool as the quill is graduated in inches and millimeters for depth. It has a 3 HP open frame GE repulsion induction motor, back gearing and power feeds. I use it regularly. I paid 200 bucks for it over 20 years ago. It has earned its keep many times over. I just bought a load of tapered shank HSS drills from a fellow who was selling some of his grandfather's tools. I have pushed a 1 1/4" bit through annealed locomotive spring steel, making replacement spring leaves. I made a drill jig and drilled 3/8" pilot holes in each leaf with the jig. I then opened the holes using the 1 1 /4" bit, but I made sure I had a good solid means of clamping and holding the spring leaves for the drilling. I was picking up the turnings (chips) with a shovel and putting them in a wheelbarrow, and laying down a cloud of smoke from the dark sulphur cutting oil. The old camelback drills are quite amazing machines, as I am sure you know.
My little drill press is about a 15" Powermatic, built in 1965. It is a lot more drill than the Chinese machines of similar basic design and capacity. Other than new spindle bearings and a vee belt, it has not needed anything in the 30 years I have owned it. I bought it used.
My LeBlond Regal lathe is a roundhead, 13" x about 42", built in 1943. I treat it with a healthy regard for the lighter gearing in the headstock, but it is plenty for anything I do in my home shop. If I need to use heavier lathes, I know who to go see.
My garage/shop air compressor is an ancient Worthington two-stage vee type. It is direct coupled to a 1750 rpm motor with a dampener coupling. It is an amazingly quiet machine, nowhere near the noise of the modern excuses of compressors. Iron block, bronze con rods, and an intercooler made by Harrison Radiator, a real finned-tube intercooler with a tag soldered to it. The crankcase has a bullseye so you can see the oil level and oil being circulated. The crankcase also has a real Worthington nameplate riveted to it, with the symbol with the snakes and wings (some ancient Egyptian symbol Worthington used). I marvel at the old compressor. It has an "air maze" intake air filter/dampener, with a wire gauze element that gets washed in kerosene and re-oiled from time to time.
I run my air tools with that old compressor- I mounted it on a newer 120 gallon ASME air receiver rated for 200 psig working pressure. I blow the steam whistle on air with it each New Year's Eve, running an air hammer hose out to a 1" pipe mast, with the whistle about 20 ft in the air. The sound of the whistle carries over 2 miles.
I continue to ride a 1978 BMW R 100/7 Motorcycle I bought new. I love that old machine, as does my wife. It has carburetors and coil-and-points ignition. Sand castings for the crankcase, transmission case, and cylinder jugs with iron sleeve liners. Wife and I have logged many miles over the 33 + years we've been married on that old horse. Massive lower end in the engine, good husky gears in the tranny, Timken Roller Bearings that you can repack in the wheels, swingarm and steering neck. It came with a complete toolkit, even a tire pump and patch kit (tube type tires). It is kind of a timeless machine, ideal for back roads or gravel if you encounter it, fine on the highways. Maybe it won't carve the corners like some newer rice rocket, but it keeps on running.
I like the older machinery and vehicles and equipment. Simple, heavier built, easy to operate and easy to maintain. Built to last. I enjoyed working in hydroelectric powerplants as the machinery was massive, simple, and slow turning. Babbitted bearings for the most part, even on units where the journals wer 50" diameter and the rotating element assembly weighed 800 tons. Again, stuff that required basic skills and a good head, and could be repaired, rebuilt, and kept running. We have some units over 90 years old still running and putting power into the grid. I've seen the new machinery, whether for a machine shop, powerplant, vehicle, or for agriculture or similar. It seems light and not built like the machinery of even 25-30 years ago. I've seen new pumps arrive to replace old one at powerplants. Where the old ones (ca 1970) had cast iron baseplates with machined mounting pads, the new pumps have welded/fabricated baseplates with little or no machined surfaces. Baseplates so limber that unless the concrete foundation they sit upon is grouted after the bedplate is levelled, the bedplate will otherwise flex in service. I've seen comparable tractors to my old Yanmar, only now they have three cylinders, non-rebuildable engine blocks, and the diesels crank along at about 3000 rpm for rated power. The explanation is that the average person buying a "subcompact" diesel tractor nowadays has no inkling as to how the tractor works or what torque is about. All they care about is that the tractor does not vibrate and is quiet. My old Yanmar, with its two cylinders, is a long stroke engine with lots of low end torque. When I tell people my tractor only has two cylinders, they look at me strangely. I tell them the old "Johnny Poppers"- the original John Deere ag tractors- use a two cylinder engine for many years, and it was an incredibly enduring and rugged design.
I could go on as to how things have been lightened up in all areas. Even something like household appliances has been an area where stuff has gotten cheapened up and made into "throwaway" goods. I had my grandmother's old upright vacuum cleaner, from the 1930's. I saved the blower and motor to use for blowing forge fires back in about 1970. I recently took that blower off the shelf to shape up for my buddy to use. I found the thing was amazing, and this was a consumer grade product, sold to people of modest means. The motor and blower used aluminum sand castings. Outside brush caps to the brushes could be easily serviced. Repackable ball bearing assemblies on the armature shaft. Balancing holes in the blower impeller. An adjustable brass plate so they could set the vacuum cleaner's "height" with settings for rugs, smooth floors, etc. This plate had a neat pointer on the wheel assembly so the vacuum could be raised or lowered for cleaning different types of floors. I cleaned the old blower, repacked the bearings, made a mounting for it out of scrap steel, and fitted a discharge pipe which could then connect to 3" stovepipe for the air blast to a forge. My buddy is using that blower on his forge, controlling speed with a "Variac". We laugh about my grandmother's old vacuum cleaner still being up and at 'em and blowing the forge fire handily.
There is a lot of truth in the old saying: "They don't make 'em like they used to". In part, advances in manufacturing processes and materials (read: plastics), and the use of modern design methods and software such as finite element analysis and CAD and solidworks lets designers "lean things out" until the barest minimum of materials is used to make their products. Then, there is the "throwaway mentality". Ask the average person if they ever serviced their own lawnmower or snow blower, or whether they ever filed or otherwise sharpened their mower's blade, or repacked the wheel bearings on a bicycle. Different times and it seems like things changed exponentially in the 43 years I've been a mechanical engineer. Many changes are for the better, but a lot of changes are not so good.
When I was asked to specify and write purchase specs for machine tools for the powerplants, I refused to entertain the notion of new machine tools. New = imports, and imports, by and large, = s--t machine tools. We needed heavy machine tools, basic, and able to handle heavy jobs. The result is I bought good used LeBlond lathes and had them reconditioned as required. I bought a used Carlton radial drill, and a used planer mill. About the only machine tools I bought new were a Bridgeport Series II special, back in the 1990's when Bridgeport still built them in Bridgeport, CT, and a Clausing drill press. Anything else was a good used US made machine tool, and there is no comparison with the imports. I could never cozy up to the new imported machine tools. I've looked inside of them and seen the quality of the castings (or lack thereof), and the fit, finish, and overall feel of the imports is just not up to what the good classic US machine tools have. When we were doing powerplant overhaul work, nothing beat the old US made iron. You are doing a good thing in giving a good home to that camelback drill, for sure.
