Leonard and Thais Graff in Paris, 1960

Every month I get an emailed catalog from DelMonico Hatter, promoting their stylish hats — Borsalino, Stetson, Kangol — the best brands. Ernest DelMonico, who runs the firm, is a third generation hatter from New Haven, Connecticut, and his merchandise is first rate. I once bought a black Kangol cap from them to go with my navy and tan ones. Frankly, I rarely wear a hat. Only when I dress up and put on the navy cashmere topcoat I bought twenty years ago do I wear a Kangol. I’m a hood or baseball cap guy.

But I do love DelMonico’s hats. He was featuring a Homburg last Sunday, trying to capitalize on the opening of the new Great Gatsby film set in the Roaring Twenties.

I could never wear a Homburg hat. Too David Niven or Walter Pigeon, but I was fascinated by the catalog photos of the hat with the details about the materials and design specs, down to the brim size and choice of bands and feathers.

I love the idea of Homburgs, fedoras and panamas. I just don’t like wearing those things on my head.

Harrison Ford, as Indiana Jones, could pull it off. How I’ve wanted to wear one of those bruised, brown fedoras like Indy and outfox the Nazis. But could anybody really wear one like Dr. Jones? When I try to imagine myself as the fearless archaeologist with the sweaty brown fedora, I end up seeing myself as Yosemite Sam, the three foot tall Bugs Bunny character with the four foot hat covering everything but his mustache.

I was visiting friends recently in Austin, Texas. My wife Risa and I made the mandatory stop for Western wear at Allen’s Boots. Risa bought a pair of cowboy boots. It’s what a Chicago lady does in Austin. Damn, I wanted a Stetson. I tried several on. Beautiful hats, soft brim, silk lining. Looked ridiculous on me. It would have resided forever in my closet.

Where did this gut fascination and rational rejection of hats come from?

It’s a father-son thing, I’m sure.

My Dad, Leonard Graff, could really wear a hat. He rarely left the house without one. He owned several fedoras — the real fur felt articles. On his one and only trip to Europe in 1960 he went to the temple of hats, the Borsalino factory in Alessandria, Italy. He brought a beret home for me and I cherished it. My father even had a Homburg for formal occasions and a pork pie for light ones.

At 6’6″ tall with a made-to-order suit, Serge overcoat and a navy Borsalino fedora, he was an imposing man. I wish I could wear a hat like him, but it’s just not me. My father had the big personality to go with his big frame.

He died in 1996, right around this time of year, and I think of him every day.

I love the idea of hats. I study them, I imagine them on my head, but I can’t wear a hat like my father did. They were him. They were Indiana Jones. And that’s okay.

At this point in my life, I’m happy to just be me.

Question: Do you try to be like your father?

A Mayfran Chip Handling System

I’ve closely studied two recent auctions of screw machines and ancillary equipment – Anderson Fittings in Chicago and MTTM in the Twin Cities last week – for indications of market strength and customer preferences. This is not just “inside baseball” for people in the trade. These auctions, which from all appearances were actually honest sales with no observable price pumping (I tend to be cynical about this stuff), tell a clear story about the turned parts market, at least for the multi-spindle niche.

The buyers generally do not need more capacity. They have more than enough spindles turning. At the Anderson auction, nice rebuilt Davenports in the1980s and ’90s with threading and pickoff brought $5,000 or less. New Britain Model 52, 6-spindles with threading went for $3,000 to $10,000, with a 1981 62 New Britain fetching under $20,000 with buyer’s premium. The one machine that brought a fair price was a 1995 8-spindle model 81 New Britain that sold for a little under $60,000 with the BP. When I evaluated the deal last winter I had figured the automatics would bring higher prices than that, yet I significantly underestimated what the auction ultimately brought in total.

The wild card at Anderson was the peripheral equipment, such as a Mayfran chip handling system which brought almost $50,000 and Ransohoff parts washing machines which had been disconnected and pushed to the wall when I evaluated the deal. The parts cleaning machines brought in over $100,000, which surprised everybody at the sale except the people bidding on them, because it was a fraction of the replacement cost.

The tooling and spare parts exceeded expectations, and the underground auger for transporting chips to the crushers and spinners brought $10,000, to my surprise.

The auction in Minnesota last week told a similar story. It was a collection of old nondescript 6-spindle National Acmes, which I assessed would bring low prices at the sale–and they did. The only machine worth more than $20,000 was a mid-1970s 1-¼ RA-6 that sold for $26,000 including the buyer’s premium. A decent 3-½” RB-6 took in $6,000 and a mediocre 1” RAN-6 without a pickoff fetched under $10,000.

But bidding on the tooling and accessories rocked. A Winter thread rolling attachment sold for over $4,000 and Langolf shave tool holders fetched almost $1,000 each.

The takeaway from these recent auctions is that buyers in this field do not covet more capacity, they have enough spindles turning. What they need and will pay for are the complimentary tools and equipment that will make their operations better and more versatile. Attachments, tooling, chip equipment, washers and inspection items are what auction buyers will bid up the price for.

In the Graff-Pinkert machinery business we see a similar trend. Our clients often want to “trade in” their tired but still viable machinery for similar but rebuilt machines with productive attachments hung on them. The machine is seen as a platform for the attachments and tooling which give manufacturers an advantage with a relatively modest extra cost.

For people in the trade this is an important market shift from “more to better.”

Question: Is it easier to find good machinists today?

The Alchemist by ChrisRa. Original artwork done for the forthcoming game from Mind Juice Media, Spellchemy.

I love the used machinery business because it is a competitive treasure hunt every day. It asks us for impossible calculations about realizable values for illiquid, flawed, sometimes rickety, filthy objects that often have little tangible worth when we are asked to buy them.

Here’s an example of the type of situation we consider at my company Graff-Pinkert every day. A firm has a 25-year-old screw machine or rotary transfer machine that it does not need at the moment. It has long been written off the financial statements, yet the potential seller feels it still has value but doesn’t know how much. He calls dealers for comps, checks eBay for similar machines, and considers whether he may use it again soon himself. He advertises it or calls us and probes for an offer. We feel the piece may have enough potential value that would make it a worthwhile addition to our stock, but we need to determine whether it is badly worn and will require substantial expensive refurbishing, or if it can be sold in its present state, which usually means full of oily chips, a nasty appearance, and out of production.

If by chance the machine shows well and is still running good parts, it becomes inviting for our broker competition, which hopes to turn it quickly for a modest but quick profit, without doing any of the difficult work of returning it to its original state of productivity.

Our challenge is to find machines that can be reclaimed from 25 years of factory abuse, refurbish them and reconfigure them to meet our client’s imminent need, and do it for a price that will be competitive and provide us with a profit that will keep the doors open. How do we do this nutty alchemy? It ain’t easy.

We deal with clients who approach business from a distinctly different angle than ourselves. They are engineers or shop folk who are obsessed with precision and repeatability. While we both pray to the same god of “return on investment,” my company is focused on one machine at a time, while they may be looking at the profit on a million pieces.

We are selling reliability, hand holding and an understanding of the capability of the machine, while our machinery broker competitors may be selling primarily on price.

Turned parts people are extremely price oriented. They deal in pennies per part and fractions of seconds of idle time, so every expenditure is weighed and reweighed for its impact on the bottom line.

For me a deal is an art form, an intellectual and artistic challenge to shape the price, terms, and other variables to meet the customer’s needs and wants, even if they are unspoken.

How do we make a profit?

Another “art form.”

Naturally, it is crucial to acquire “raw material” right. If you buy machines for stock like we do, you need to find machines that are not so horrible that they defy reclamation. You need skilled machinists and electricians to refurbish them. You need a cleaning crew to suck the swarf out and return them to their original beauty, and you must be skilled at scrounging for the new and used parts these old workhorses require to regain their mojo.

Over the years, we have acquired thousands of viable parts, accessories and attachments for the kinds of machines we sell. They have been stripped off machines or salvaged from the flotsam and jetsam of pillaged factories. Many days all the greasy iron looks like pennies a pound scrap to me, and then a Wickman buyer needs just the shaft we’ve held for a decade and it turns into gold in my eyes.

Banks and accountants struggle with how to account for our inventory of reclaimed, exquisite crud. “What is it worth?” they ask. “How long have you had it?” they inquire. “What did you pay for it?” they want to know.

When asked these logical questions by well-meaning, but uninitiated outsiders I have to stifle my penchant for sarcasm and flippancy. They are good questions for regular businesses with inventories not comprised of cannibalized Acmes, half attachments, and renegade Hydromat flanges.

The bankers and accountants study our net worth numbers each year coming up with a verdict on our success or failure. I struggle to contain my cynicism, annoyance, sometimes triumph. Profit, net-worth, margins and ratios are the stuff numbers people obsess about, and I care about those things, because as the owner and boss I need to. But where my love of the used machinery business truly stems from is the constant challenge to do the impossible. We turn iron into gold, and do it steadily enough to pay the bills each month.

Question: Are good used machines a better value than new machines?