Need a big lathe?

[NM_Shooter]

How cool is this!

http://santafe.craigslist.org/tls/3071270711.html

[MushCreek]

I bought its twin for $100 at an auction many years ago. It took me most of the day to move it, as I had to dis-assemble it and move it piece by piece. It was too big to be practical, and I sold it to a guy who used it to cut and re-weld driveshafts. Fun stuff!

I once saw a lathe that was about 80' long, used to make battleship gun barrels. The operator rode on the tool post!

[rick91351]

I bought its twin for $100 at an auction many years ago. It took me most of the day to move it, as I had to dis-assemble it and move it piece by piece. It was too big to be practical, and I sold it to a guy who used it to cut and re-weld driveshafts. Fun stuff!

I once saw a lathe that was about 80' long, used to make battleship gun barrels. The operator rode on the tool post!

Yep, the Gun Plant at Pocatello, Idaho.  Only place in the USA that turned battleship barrels.  When I worked at Pocatello for Union Pacific in 1976 and 1977.  I would catch jobs now and then that took railroad cars of steel out there.  Just on the north end of town.  Bucyrus Erie owned or leased the Gun Plant then.  They manufactured those huge drag lines and cranes there.  They were never assembled there of course.  One of those drag line buckets they did assemble there was large enough to handle six pickup trucks in side of it.

The gun lathe I heard was scraped or disassembled when they moth balled the battleships the last time.  There was talk of removing the gun turrets making them in to cruise missile launch platforms on a couple of those ship.  A couple were modernized and used as such in Desert Storm.  However as the old line battleship tactics and shore based missiles left them in a bad way for protection.   

[rick91351]

How cool is this!

http://santafe.craigslist.org/tls/3071270711.html

Glenn!  Glenn!  OH GLENN!!!   

[NM_Shooter]

Yeah... maybe Glenn could pick that up for turning pens or something 

[glenn kangiser]

Guys, that is nice but... don't know if Mtn Don saw mine under the junk or not, but I have a nice Cincinnati 26x96 sitting in my shop here.  I used to run up to 18 or 20 inch diameter 20 feet long on it with the tailstock off.

Guess I should clean it off and take a pix of it, eh?

I also just sold about a 12 foot gap lathe for 500 I set up for cutting well casing with a plasma torch.  I geared it down to 1 rpm and it would cut off a 5 foot joint of casing every minute plus set up time.  We  match marked them and welded them back together as we drilled. 

[glenn kangiser]

Here is the one I just sold.

It is about 9 or 10 feet long right now but with the gap I think it would crank out to more than 12 feet - maybe 14.  I just never did open it up.

[considerations]

"Bucyrus Erie owned or leased the Gun Plant then.  They manufactured those huge drag lines and cranes there."

Small world....I used to find and sell very large steel alloy forged rounds to Bucyrus Erie that they machined on those old gun lathes. They ended up being axles for the walking drag lines. That would have been 1978-80.