REO

I am 52 years old. I have been in wood work for at least 47 of these drilling ice auger handles when I was 5 standing on an apple crate. I started on a lathe as a production turner when I was 7 In my fathers shop. I got into metalwork to support my father in the wood shop with repairs, specialty fixtures, jigs and some production equipment. He had a shop till he was 86 and had a stroke and liquidated practically giving the equipment away. He had always avoided making the wood work a family business. I was able to retain only one of his original production machines. The “big lathe” went to a fellow who wanted to turn porch columns and he set it out in a corn field for a few years and then went through divorce so it ended up scrap iron. This lathe would take 9 feet between centers(we would outboard the tail stock and do longer lengths up to 16 feet by flipping them end for end). We turned things from peanut sized to 2 foot diameter and 24 feet long.