I've been lurking for about a year. I'm James from North Central Texas and I have been setting up my home shop. I am into metalworking and have been collecting machinery. I've been learning lathe work on a pair of 6x18 and 12x36 Atlas lathes. I also have a pair of Clausing mills, a 8520 vertical and a 8540 horizontal. I just brought home a South Bend 16" lathe with a 12' bed. As soon as I get it in the shop, I'm going to do a tear down to inspect, lubricate, replace felts and any worn parts I find. I've also cut a deal for a G.A. Gray planer from the very early 1900's. I have to travel a bit to pick that one up soon. I've also purchased an Atlas 7B shaper that will arrive in a month or so as soon as the owner returns from vacation.

So far all I've done is make bits and pieces of tooling for my machines but I have some more involved projects in mind as soon as I get the new arrivals set up and powered.

As a bit of background, I'm a retired master electrician and spent the last 12 years of my electrical career as a industrial power, control and instrumentation contractor and the past 15 years as a medical IT consultant. My hobbies are motorcycling, amateur gunsmithing, auto restoration, computers, electronics and generally anything do to with interesting machinery or tools.