When I went to go buy my what can only be described as my sexy tractor lathe (my South Bend I'm restoring) he had a 48" Bridgeport mill he wanted for $450 or best offer, it's super rusty and as any knee mill weights a metric fuck ton of 1,800 lbs. I thought about buying it on the spot, but I currently don't have space in the barn. And my tractor cannot lift it, however he said he would load it into my truck and I have a relative that can store it for me while I work on it and my relative has a neighbor that has a soup'd up tractor that could unload it. So here the question, is it worth buying? It needs a lot of work and is super rusty, it does have a pump in the back compartment as well as the motor was swapped with a 110v motor that appears to have a lamp cord soldered on (which I would swap the motor out) and it has all the 3 phase switches and accessory except the handle for the knee. It would need a lot of work and would be at least a few months of work. Also on a finale note, the blue mill for the 50-60s is for sale for $2,500 at my work which should I save up for it or buy this rust bucket? Cheers!!
I do remember that the ways still were shiny in the inside and the knee moved pretty smooth aswell as the spindle turned, however the the quil was a bit rough to move up and down, but still did. I don't have a crane but I will have alot of space were I plan to restore it and plan to go out on weekends to work on it. I don't know about the pure weight of the mill parts, like how much the knee or the spindle weights but Thanks for the advice. I may go out and look at it again because I talked to an old timer machinist that's currently working on building a 5 axis cnc mill in garage and he told me a few things to check like the ways and how to check them for wear.
I don't remember exact weights but I believe the table itself was about 150LB of iron, and the knee casting about 300-350. The head itself might be another 300-400 with the motor attached, and the total combined machine weight is typically over 2000lb. None of them are movable by hand.