Sometimes the hype of buying old heavy American iron is a little overdone, don't get me wrong, that's all I've got. I have a good friend who bought a pretty heavy old Bridgeport, it was clean and maintained, and the only thing he had the broker check was arbor runout. Turns out, it was used in the aircraft industry production for many years. If you are a half fast machinist...you know what stacking errors are, a little here, a tad there, times 4X...bottom line you have a machine that won't hold tolerance. Then it's sell it, or go into the money pit of a rebuild...contrary to what some people say...you don't just tighten the gibs in 10 minutes and do low tolerance work. All the big pieces wear on tapers, tight in the center of travel is too tight at the ends of travel and vice-versa.
Just sayin'.
