Hey guys – hope you all had a great Thanksgiving – if you are in the US, that is! Today, the day after Thanksgiving, is known as “Black Friday”, and is the biggest retail shopping day of the year.
It’s called black Friday because if you add up all of a retailer’s annual expenses versus their sales, supposedly, this is the day when they finally start making money above and beyond their annual expenses, and “go into the black” – or something like that…
Anyway, about 10 years ago or so, US retailers started REALLY competing heavily for shoppers on Black Friday, by offering all of these super deals on television sets, etc. And as a result, people go BERSERK fighting for the limited number of $99 flat screen TV’s, etc. – it’s INSANE – people actually get trampled every year!
I stay FAR away from all of this mayhem, but this year, I actually did go shopping – for a new machine! Take a look!
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- And we’re off! Headed down to Baltimore to check out a new machine for the shop at a used machinery warehouse. The stone buildings on the right are really old housing units from some old factory I think. Whatever it is, they call this “The Beehive”, and they have an annual apple-butter festival here in the Fall and there is always a blacksmith display that is pretty cool!
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- THE ENEMY! – Just north of the Fort McHenry tunnel I spotted these MOUNTAINS of road salt!
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- Now this is my kind of store!
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- Check out all of the cool vintage machines! The showroom floor was crowded, but the whole place was neat and clean! Crowded with machinery, that is – I was the ONLY customer in this store on Black Friday!
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- Here is today’s “doorbuster deal” for our shop – a new slip roller!
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- This is a vintage Niagara 16-gauge slip roller – 48″ working length with 3″ rolls. Also known as an “E-Type door skin maker!” She is in very good condition, and all of the gearing inside the gearbox was in excellent condition.
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- I put my hand in this shot to help show the scale. This is a heavy duty machine that will roll the door skins true – anything less than this would not have a uniform roll to it…
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- I asked if this was some kind of large surface grinder, and the attendant helping me said, “We call that a BFG!”
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- I believe this is a large punch press – alot of this stuff is specialized and you have to kind of psyche out what it is by looking at it…
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- This machine does everything…
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- I started salivating over this 4-foot Dreis and Krump press brake, but managed to bring myself back to reality. It needed work, and I don’t have time for tool restoration right now (like that’s ever stopped me before…)
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- Here is the gear driven back gauge which is adjustable from the front of the brake – this would be great on our gap shear…
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- Here is a bigger brother to our gap shear – a power squaring shear.
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- Now those are some serious band saws!
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- Enough shopping – I made my deal with the owner, and it’s time to give this machine a new home at Monocoque Metalworks!
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- Forklifts just make things so easy…
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- Here is one of the larger lathes…
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- All loaded up – time to head home!
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- I made it up I-95 and now I’m almost back to the shop – just driving along listening to Christmas music and drinking coffee – happy as a clam with my new toy!
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- Passing by Fair Hill natural resource area – this is where many Triple Crown horses are trained. These bridges are all over the place where I live – they are for fox hunts!
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- Back at the shop and rolling her in with our mini-lift. We’ll be using this machines (as well as some others) to make door skins for all of the shells in the background – and boot floors, and driveshaft tunnels, and cowl side and top panels, and… Now THAT’S what I call a great Black Friday shopping experience!
