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On my back porch in Roscoe Village, under the L tracks, with an electric drill in a stand that was my father's as my only power tool, Lund and Company took its first steps back in 1984. I spent countless hours and days searching for inexpensive, used equipment. As a start up money was tight. It would be tight again years later when the down years came upon us. But for many a year the future was so bright we had to wear shades. I crawled and squeezed my way through the dark and cavernous floors of Kaji’s warehouses, loaded to overflowing with the industrial machinery and office equipment he bought at auction, looking for a good deal on inexpensive used machine tools, lathes, sanders, drill presses, mills, work tables, and desks. We were moving into our first real office and we needed everything. Somewhere in Kaji’s many warehouses, everything was to be had, haggled over, moved, and installed. Money was tight and everything was used, cheap Chinese tools. I later realized that all the time I spent searching was a trade-off, and maybe not such a good one, for the lower prices I got on the equipment. Time is money, it is irreplaceable, and it is easy to squander it in the interest of saving a few dollars. We later bought new equipment, to better make use of our time, but still used inexpensive Chinese-made lathes and mills, which were adequate to our needs. Later still, we upgraded to older, US-made machine tools, back when Hardinge and Bridgeport were world standards, now since gone. It was a big step to get our first Bridgeport.
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