Big camelback drill $1800 - Lindsay, On

[Dan Dubeau]

https://www.facebook.com/marketplac...eed_ranking_signature":"9177086645800421085"}

Not exactly a big "start the car" deal (IMO of course), but you don't see them around very often anymore. Always thought I'd love to have a big shop with big old machines like this in it someday, but they do take up a lot of room, and certainly come with their share of issues. You can't say they don't look great though. Well, you can, but you'd be wrong .

 

[MashingMetal]

I had a big camelback like this and sold for $300 when I bought a gear head. The cool factor wore off and needed something more practical.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

I think the price on this is a multiple of where he might find a buyer. Buy ya never know. You're not buying this if you just need a drill press to drill holes, so somebody specifically looking for one might pay more. You might wait a while for that right guy though. If more or less falls into the antique/collectable genre than usable/practical machine tool.

They are cool looking, but they sure take up a bunch of space for what they can do. I'd rather have a radial arm drill than one of these for the footprint and capabilities. If I actually had space that is.

 

[whydontu]

Ah, old iron is glorious. And the camelback we used to have at work had some very cool features. The neatest was the quill return setup. It didn't use a spring, it had a weight inside the column, attached by chain to the quill, with angular adjustment to vary the retracting force. Force was equal at all points of travel, unlike a spring that changes force as it coils and uncoils. You could set the counterweight to balance the drill bit, either set for a bit of slow retraction, or a bit of slow feed. Really nice for fine work, and if you're drilling a zillion holes you aren't fighting spring force for an 8-hour shift.

And quiet, no rattling sheet metal belt guards, no guards at all.

I would have bought it when the shop got a new drill press, but it was too tall to fit in my garage.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Nice drill press!. That quill return sounds like a great feature. I love stuff from back in the days of mechanical innovation. We've long peaked on mechanical design and it seems all the companies that make mechanical things now all slap their name on the same boxy/boring barely adequate stuff from import sources, and make up for lackluster designs with tech/electronic innovation/gadgets. Not to mention aesthetics are an afterthought on tools. You can't simply dress up a pig. Drill press innovation now is laser crosshairs, and electronic speed dials, hidden behind mandatory guarding that does nothing but get in the way, all mounted to the same basic mechanical design from 1978, that's only gotten shittier due to manufacturing cost cutting measures since then.

I have an old hand crank post drill, and I love the ratchet pawl autofeed design. Same thoughts about old farm machinery. I could stare at that old stuff for days. All the gears, levers, and old mechanisms to make and manipulate motion.