George C. TAFT drills, etc.

[Stan Schulz]

Hello,
I'm working on a piece about 19th Century inventor & manufacturer George C. Taft of Worcester, MA.  Starting in the late 1850s, but more so in the 1880s & beyond he was marketing horizontal & post drills that incorporated some "adjustable self-feed" features he'd patented.  The patents can be found in DATAMP and at vintagemachinery.org .

I've seen a few catalog illustrations, but hope someone has actual examples that they could photo & share photos.

My time frame is fairly short.  I want to put this in the March 2016  Missouri Valley Wrench Club Newsletter which means I need to have everything in hand by February  10th.
 
Early in his career & at least one other time (1840s & early 1860s ) he was manufacturing "letter copy presses" (doubt any of those have survived since they were made obsolete by the typewriter & carbon paper)  & he also made wrenches -- the wrench collectors have noted examples of those. 

Thanks for any help anyone can give me.
Regards, Stan Schulz, editor Missouri Valley Wrench Club Newsletter  (can use personal message feature if you don't want to build this thread.)

[Aunt Phil]

Look into post & beam boring machines used by timber framers in the time frame for the horizontal boring machine.  They tend to be well collected today.

As to survival of letterpress copying, it was still in use in the 1950s when Kodak and Chester Carlson were working to develop a replacement.  Yawman & Erbe the office furniture manufacturer continued to make letterpress equipment into the 50s.