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On June 21st, 2010, Maynards hosted the on-line liquidation of Cole Pattern & Engineering in Fort Wayne, Indiana.


This is another sale that I stumbled upon while searching for Wadkin parts. The only item I was interested in was a Wadkin WL 20 vertical milling machine. This mill is much bigger and heavier than any machine I’ve owned. It has a gross weight of 14,450 LBS, and is just under 11′ tall. I’ve recently run up against the limitations of my Toolmaster mills. In particular, the throat capacity and the longitudinal movement have both come up short on a few projects I have waiting. The WL 20 has an impressive throat capacity of 35″. It also has a longitudinal movement of 48″ and a transverse movement of 31″. A few other great features of the mill are the 360 degree power rotary table and the 300 degree swivel on the column.

There was a very generic description (“Wadkins Vertical mill 26″ x 48″ table and DRO”) and a single photo of the mill in auction catalog.

I couldn’t get to Fort Wayne for the preview, so I tried calling the auction company to get confirmation on the model/serial numbers of the machine. I reached the on-site handler, but he didn’t have phone service inside the building. He agreed to look at mill and call me back the next morning. The call never came and I was pretty nervous about whether I’d be able to get the mill out of the building and then trailer it the 600 miles back to Jersey. I decided to drop a $350 bid on it and do a wait and see on the rigging and transportation. The worse case scenario is that I’d strip the DRO and tooling from the machine and sell the hulk to the local scrap dealer.

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As it turned out, my $350.00 was the only bid. I now had to turn my attention to figuring out whether it was even possible for me to get the mill rigged out, loaded and trailered home. My bigest concern was the weight. My trailer is only good for 10,000 lbs. This mill obviously weighed all of that if not substantially more. To make matters worse, the removal period was five days. This meant I’d have to take a few days off work. I called the auction house several more times, but wasn’t able to reach anyone on-site. I did some on-line searches for documentation on this mill and started comparing pictures in an attempt to verify the model number. After all of this, all I could confirm was that I had a WL.

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Two days before the final removal date, I decided to make the drive to Fort Wayne. I left Central Jersey at 4:00 AM and arrived at 2:00 in the afternoon. Most of the smaller machines in the sale had already been removed. There were a number of very large mills, CnC lathes and other miscellaneous machines still in the building. There was alot of activity around collecting the aluminum, steel and brass scrap. So much so that I had a difficult time finding anybody that would even discuss the removal.

When I finally located my mill, I was surprised to find a folder with all the documentation for the mill sitting right on the table. The first thing I did was open to the specifications page. The net weight was listed at 12,500 Lbs for the basic machine and 14,500 gross weight with all the options installed.

I found the on-site guy from Maynards and asked him about forklifts. He advised me that the only lifts available were rated for 5,000 Lbs or less. Given that I was only in town for the day, I decided to find the local scrap dealer. As it turned out, he was less than a mile away and agreed to come back to the plant to look at the mill. He agreed to buy it from me, but only if I could get it moved outside the building. Since none of the forklifts were big enough to remove the machine, I resigned myself to abandoning it. I started packing up the tooling and getting ready to strip the DRO and scales from the machine. About 30 minutes into the process, a forklift rental company truck pulled up and unloaded another forklift. After the driver left I went over and checked the lift out. It was small in size, but was rated for 33,000 Lbs.

It was almost 4:00 PM and everyone had left. I went and found the auction guy and asked him about the lift. He told me that one of the riggers had it delivered for a pickup the following week. I asked him what it would take for him to let me use the lift for an hour.

Auction Guy: Do you know how to run that lift?
“Absolutely.”

Auction Guy: Will that forklift pick that mill up?

“Absolutely.”

Auction Guy: OK. I’m going to dinner. The key’s in the lift… try not to break anything.

It took me less than 10 minutes to get the mill up on blocks and another 5 minutes to get it out into the parking lot. Once outside in the daylight it didn’t seem so big. I decided I should try setting it on the trailer and see how bad it looked. I had to move it around several times, but finally got it into a position where it looked like it would ride pretty well. I drove the truck around the parking lot a few times an was surprised by how well it was riding. I spent the next hour tying everything down and packing up the tooling.

By the time I finished, the auction guy showed up. I gave him fifty dollars and thanked him for his help.

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Pulling out onto the highway, I could tell that this was a real load for my little truck. This wasn’t the heaviest load I had ever pulled, but it was the heaviest load I had ever pulled this far from home.

About 15 miles on my way, I stopped for fuel. After I got the pump going, I checked the trailer tires. The tires on the front axle were so hot I couldn’t hold my hand on them. At that point, I realized that I’d have to go alot slower (at least until the roads cooled down).

The trip home was gruelling. The worst of it was the hills along I-80 in western PA. I was slowing down to 35 MPH on every clim and speeding up to 70 going down the other side. I passed several open weigh stations along the way. I was surprised everytime that they didn’t come after me.

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I finally arrived in Jersey the next morning at 10 AM. Happy to have made it home safe, I set my sights on getting the mill off the trailer. My Hyster is only rated for 5500 Lbs, so I had to go next door and get the Lull.

I rigged the mill with pipes through the base and used nylon straps over the top of the boom. The straps were rated for 12,000 Lbs, but one of them snapped as soon as I put pressure on them. I noticed that the front of the base had four large holes tapped on both sides. I remembered that my Wakin moulder had a set of lifting hooks bolted to it. Fortunately, they fit the mill. A few minutes later I had it rigged up with chains.

In order to position the boom over the base, I had to approach from the rear of the trailer and get the forks on either side of the column. With the mill positioned at the front of the trailer, this meant that the boom was extended about 10 feet. When I tried to lift the mill, the rear wheels of the Lull came off the ground. To get around this, I laid some heavy timbers on the deck of the trailer and retracted the boom. the mill slid back; turning the timbers to toothpicks on the way. Once it had moved back about four feet I was able to get it lifted off the trailer enough to drive out from under it.

Getting the mill into my building wasn’t as much of a hassle. I have a set of 14 foot wide doors at the back of the building. I was able to drive the lull directly inside and set the mill within eight feet of it’s final resting place. I used skates, wrecking bars and a railroad jack to get the mill positioned and set down on the leveling plates. The nice thing about this spot is that it is close enough to the door that I can use the forklift to put heavy workpieces on the table.

This mill will be a great addition to the shop. The first project I have queued up for it is a rolling table I had cast for an L. Power single end tenoner.

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There were alot of other great machines in this sale:

This Tegle & Sonner jointer sold for $475._

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This Martin planer sold for $3750._

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This Kindt Collins 30″disc sander sold for $1100._

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This DoAll metal bandsaw sold for $1025._

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And this American 36″ Bandsaw sold for $150._

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There were also several other milling machines that sold at reasonable prices:

Lagun Vertical mill With Anilam wizard 211 DRO $575._

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Lagun Vertical mill With DRO Model# FTV25 $725._

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Lagun Vertical mill With Sony DRO $600._

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Ekstrom Vertical mill With DRO Model# 540 $250._

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Bohner & Kohle With DRO Model# MFI $1900_

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And finally, the machine I most regret not buying:

Veet Precision Radial Drill that sold for $250._

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click here If you’re interested in seeing the complete results for the auction.

One thing I noted was that although many of the large machines were sold on-line, they were still up for grabs when I went for removal. Any of the CnC machines could have been had for scrap value after the auction. The scrap guy I spoke to was working a deal with the foundry to get most of the mills (large & small) and a bunch of the CnC machines.

 

The owwm

One Response to “Cole Pattern & Engineering. Fort Wayne, IN”

  1. Terry L. Tyler says:

    I have a 1924 model 29 baxter D Whitney 36” planer #11846. I was wondering if you might know a buyer and the value of it. if not were thinking of scrapping it. It seems to be in to good of shape for that.

    Terry T

Leave a Reply to Terry L. Tyler