Saying Good-Bye to what feels like an old friend

Within the last week I received news that a company I've been a customer of since around the start of this century is closing down. 

The company is Sherline Products, makers of wonderful machine tools that are on the small side, but excellent for making small, "hobby-sized" projects. They're still taking orders for parts, accessories and the tools themselves, but they say:

We plan to continue building and selling machines, tooling, accessories, and replacement parts to the extent our remaining equipment, materials, staffing, and inventory allow through the end of October.

Some manufacturing operations, particularly those requiring our larger production equipment, will necessarily end sooner as that equipment is removed from service.

Because availability will change throughout this transition, some products may become unavailable before others. We appreciate your patience and understanding as our employees work to fill as many orders as reasonably possible during these final weeks of production.

If you've read here for a while, I've talked about Sherline tools and my adventures with them many, many times. If I can grab a short summary from myself, something I posted in September of 2014...

I was one of those guys who kept saying "one of these days" I wanted to get a lathe and into metal working. Mrs. Graybeard took me up on that about 10 years ago [2004] and gifted me my Sherline 4400 micro lathe for Christmas. I had never actually touched any machine tools at all at that point, so to say I didn't know jack is an understatement. After playing with that lathe for 6 months, learning how to make some chips, and reading the Yahoo Sherline group (now at groups.io) regularly, an ad appeared for a CNC Sherline mill surplussed from a school system across the state in Tampa. After a 350 mile round trip drive, I pulled a CNC Sherline mill into my garage. The only problem was that nothing about it worked, except that the spindle motor turned. Like my lathe on its first day, this was the first time I had ever touched a milling machine.  

That first Christmas present lathe was was my introduction to Sherline, and the CNC Sherline mill my introduction to CNC. I eventually bought a "CNC Ready" Sherline lathe, and learned to thread on that before I learned to thread manually on the Sherline. Not threading but just changing diameters is "falling off a log" easy. I now have three lathes: big and small non-CNC lathes along with that CNCed Sherline. I have two milling machines in the shop. Plus the CNC Sherline milling machine and a bigger G0704 that I converted to CNC via online posts.

This barely touches my 20+ year experiences with Sherline, making everything from an AR-15 from an 80% lower to engines that run from bar stock, guitar parts and more. 

With Sherline having been a market leader that has been turning out good stuff for 52 years, I fully expect the vast majority of hardware needs we may have will have multiple sources. Right now, they're running a 25% off sale, bigger than any sale I can think of, so if you're an owner, spare parts are probably still available.

A screen capture of Sherline's home page taken 10/3/26.