Old, Older, Oldest 2026

[n3303j]

ID Label says my 850 T3 left the factory in 1976 so she is 50 years old!

My birth cert has me produced in late 1945 so I am 80 years old.




So I'm cleaning my shop and I look up my lathe serial number and it left the factory in 1926 so it is now 100 years old. The old girl will still turn, face, bore and thread to any tolerance I require.

Old machinery does have a charm.

[Dirk_S]

Sounds like you’re including yourself in that mindset, and I wouldn’t doubt it’s true!

[chuck peterson]

I once bought a V700 from a gentleman at his shop in East Hartford, but the bike wasn’t the story

He inherited from his family a football field sized machine tool factory from pre WW2

The whole place was filled with lathes like yours, of various intended uses. Each was smoothed and glazed by the hands using them with decades of use

They built only one type of tool and sold in only one place. If you ever buy a tap extractor from McMaster-Carr, this is where they are born. They build ones large enough for oil wells, if you can imagine about a foot across…they also build ones small enough to be called dental tap extractors, tiny little things that look like you could crush it with your hand…If you break a tap, you’ll need their three or 4 pronged widgets that slide inside the grooves of the broken tap, grasp the broken tap and turn in reverse direction to remove it. He suggested to imagine a cargo ship stuck in port until one of his tap extractors arrives to save the day…!

His collection included bicycles, hanging upside down on the ceiling, packed together over a 100 of them…he also collected and rebuilt antique boat motors of all kinds… in another building he had a collection of antique wooden restored car models used as carnival rides…he had one that was a perfect wooden scale model of a Mercedes Benz from WW1

What was amazing was to see the army of lathes ready to roll, and each having a patina from 1930

The V700 didn’t qualify as something to keep or restore…he was starting a Beemer collection. Tooooo baaad…

[JJ]

Ron - Your 850-T3 is a real classic beauty!!  Well done!! 

[n3303j]

She's getting a Bender full rewire this winter. Electrics getting a bit twitchy. Treated me good for 100K+ miles so far. Definitely worth the investment.

[Moparnut72]

Ron - Your 850-T3 is a real classic beauty!!  Well done!! 

I hope mine comes out half as nice. 
kk

[n3303j]

Photos always look at least 20% nicer than the real thing. She's got 128,000 working miles on her. Tins got painted because the original black wore off to bare steel in spots. Solid, reliable & fun working bike with a classically attractive profile. But up close she bears the marks of her service.
I see so many really pretty T3 restorations that look better than factory new. But they are usually show ponies not work horses. I bought these machines to ride. There is no car in my stable. The bikes see all the weather.

[SIR REAL ED]

ID Label says my 850 T3 left the factory in 1976 so she is 50 years old!

My birth cert has me produced in late 1945 so I am 80 years old.




So I'm cleaning my shop and I look up my lathe serial number and it left the factory in 1926 so it is now 100 years old. The old girl will still turn, face, bore and thread to any tolerance I require.

Old machinery does have a charm.

Real machine tools are always driven by a leather belt!  You can quote me on that!

My dad had a drill press that had to weigh at least 1 ton.  I would guess about 1880-1920 vintage. Pretty flowers cast into the frame.  Leather drive belt, 3" wide about 12' long.  Mechanical feed engaged by pulling a lever.  Feeling that click into place was always satisfying.  Spindle speed was about 180 rpm.  3/4-1" chuck.  It seemed lik you could stick a nail in the chuck and that thing would drive it thru a 1/2" steel plate.  Never tried it.....

The power hack saw that was about 30 years never was also impressive.  The quick rasp sound of about 1/2 cubic inch of steel being removed with each stroke was nice to hear.

[Moparnut72]

Photos always look at least 20% nicer than the real thing. She's got 128,000 working miles on her. Tins got painted because the original black wore off to bare steel in spots. Solid, reliable & fun working bike with a classically attractive profile. But up close she bears the marks of her service.
I see so many really pretty T3 restorations that look better than factory new. But they are usually show ponies not work horses. I bought these machines to ride. There is no car in my stable. The bikes see all the weather.

You ride year round in Mass? You must be one tough hombre. I went to college in Worcester in the 60's where I experienced some brutal weather. The city wasn't real good at plowing snow which would form ruts in the street and then freeze. I could drive my Mom's VW with no hands just had to make sure I got in the right ruts to turn at an intersection. I rode home, southern Connecticut, for Thanksgiving, I have never been so cold in my life.
kk

[n3303j]

I lived in Central Connecticut in the early '60s. My brother was in WPI at that time. The winters then were a lot worse than recently. Worcester also has more weather than coastal Massachusetts.
I dress like one would for an enjoyable day on a snowmobile so I'm actually quite comfortable most of the time.
The Ural does the slippery road stuff and any "truck" duty.
It's actually quite fun.

[guzzisteve]

I use a belt driven grinder but it has a v-belt pulley on the outside, part of a set that was in the farm shop. I kept it my brother got the drill press, all that is left from the farm in the Fermilab acres. Original mid 1800's homestead farm. Only thing left now is the house, cause the Govt used it for offices. Everything was run on belts, some w/lectric motors most by tractors. I still have a few carpenter tools from my great grandfather from when they built barns in 1800's. We donated a sled to a farm museum that was for winter to pull rock out of the quarry in downtown Batavia, ILL, it was pulled by horses cept when I farmed a tractor. Spraying snow all over folks on the hay rack I set on top of sled. Nice to see old stuff still working.

[TOMB]

Hey, chuck,

didn't we use my pickup truck to pick up that bike your V 700 and Mike bought the little single cylinder moped thing? And I thought there was one other bike that was  bought. We took a tour of the guy's shop showed us all of the amusement cars that were made in Germany at all the motorcycles. He had, I'm just thinking that I was there and we used my black ranger truck  keep in touch,

I also think there was a Norton  by the loading dock door

TOMB