Blind Luck Locates a Treasure

If you too spent over a decade looking for a reasonably priced Colchester Chipmaster lathe, you might just want to ask me "How did you find your Chipmaster lathe?"

I could feed you a line about persistence, daily scanning for-sale ads, networking within the metal working community and such but, while I did those all those things in my case it was more a matter of dumb luck. 

In the end it was the fact that after two years of pandemic imposed solitude I was in a much more chatty mood than I normally am that scored me the lathe. While visiting an out of town CNC grinding facility that was closing down to buy diamond wheels I ended up having a rather long conversation with one of the owners about life in general, my brother and my shop adventures, his brother and his impending retirement, and the grinding machines and tooling they were selling. I made the offhand remark about having recently converting our lathe to variable speed operation when they shop owner said "I have a lathe, would you like to see it?"

I've never said no to such a question, so I followed the gentleman as he exited the building and walked a few buildings down to a garage like building. Along the way I passed a few nice old grinders rusting away in the elements, thinking "how sad is that?"

Once through the door low and behold what do I see? None other than a older model Chipmaster. Like everything else on the premises it was for sale. 

I was totally taken aback, and totally unprepared for such a sight. I did not want to lose the opportunity to buy this lathe but was not in a position to leave a down payment, and I didn't know what my budget would allow as an offer since my brother and I were in the midst of planning purchases at two upcoming auctions.

I told the owner that I was very very interested, but I wanted to bring my brother back to see then lathe, and test it out prior to making an offer. I'd wanted to make a fair offer, and knew that the market price for a Chipmaster was over $2500 for even a brutally beaten example. I departed with great excitement and dread fearing that someone else would make an offer before I could return. The following pics arrived in my inbox before I got home:

Days later before I could schedule a return visit the owner emailed me saying someone else came by and saw the lathe and offered $500. The guy is a stand up citizen and said to that other person I think it is already sold, and gave me the chance to make an offer. So I immediately replied well I'll offer you $750 right now without any inspection or test running of the lathe. If he was impatient enough to accept a low ball offer, I could be okay making one if it meant foregoing the inspection. 

Sheer dumb luck and a low ball offer won the day.