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This is my Van Norman # 12 Universal Milling machine. It is capable of Vertical or Horizontal milling. I bought it at an auction in central Texas where the owner was in progress of setting his own private machine shop. I thought maybe I could get the machine pretty cheap, but for some reason when ever I am interested in something, somebody else wants it as bad or worse. To make a long story short, I paid a nice hefty price considering what I have seen other milling machines sell for in other auctions.

I knew that it needed some good cleaning up because of all the surface rust but everything moved freely and was tight. The table has a few little dings from years of use but will not effect its use. It has longitude power feed which runs from a 2nd motor and shaft drive at the table with a transmission for different travel speeds. It has auto stops as the table extends it max on each end. it has two 3 phase motors which I test run it using a 3 phase convertor I built. Once I got it set up in my shop, I started to doing a little rust removal on the table to make sure things were OK beneath the rust. It cleans up very nicely.
The cleaning got put on hold in 04 due to my Diabetis giving me some major foot problems and as soon as the Doc will alow me to spend some time on my foot I will jump right back into restoring and painting it. My thoughts are maybe painting it a hammered Bronze or Blue. Opinions?