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Come visit the old blacksmith and machine
shop. Experience life long ago, Lean how the
past                        gives hints to the future.
Explore all the antique machine tools.
             Learn to operate them.
Make something real.

Share & exchange Information of our industrial history Tons of pic's and    original
article's about antique and old vintage machines. Learn how the progression of
machine tools development has built the easier life we have today .
We focus using and saving the worlds Machine shop and machine tool history and
woodworking machines. We also practice most related crafts.

http://blacksmithandmachineshop.com/

Overview:

If He Builds It, Will They Come?

Richard Spens has been purchasing and rebuilding antique machine tools for nearly a decade. He is drawn to the ornate architecture and
fascinated by the open design that allows you to see a machine as it operates. Of course, this interest is nothing new. "Working with
machines has been a lifelong thing with me," said Spens, now a design engineer. "I started building steam engines when I was 10 years
old." What he's working on now, however, is bigger than any steam engine or machine tool.

In the Township of Cohoctah Michigan, Spens is working on converting an old dairy barn into an accurate recreation of a
turn-of-the-century, belt-driven gear shop. It's an outgrowth of his interest in antique machine tools and, he feels, a way to stem the tide that
is costing America so many manufacturing and skilled trade jobs.

"I see America losing its industrial base and hands-on skill, said Spens. "I think it's important to keep up the interest in the young people."
He is hoping that his antique gear shop will be able to do just that by introducing children to machine tools that they can see into, watch in
operation, and even operate themselves. Ideally, they could create something that they could take away as a souvenir. It was an idea
Spens got while visiting the Henry Ford Museum's machine shop exhibit. "People were lined up to take a turn making a little candlestick at
a turret-lathe they had set up. A machinist-an old timer-would take them through the procedure, and they came away with the candlestick
they made themselves. I thought it was great."

The skills of that "old timer" are another thing Spens sees falling away from Americans today. "It used to be that the people operating these
machine tools had to be artists," he said. "Things were made by skilled hands. Then the technology improved and the art was taken out of
making
.