I'll be the first to say I have made slots like that more than once. I see we both share the same idea on not wasting the oil. I use those little needle bottles all the time on my mill and just hate wasting tap magic when threading. I also keep a couple in the house for oiling my guns. They are great. If I had an Eagle Oil can it would have already fallen off the lathe or mill and i would have steped on it crushing it. LOL Sorry about the Gershner.
The NASA t-shirt has value: it automatically makes you an "aerospace machinist"! 😁 Probably a frustrating day, but at least you got the arbor off, and the Gerstner is fixable.
I've never seen this machine before we didn't have this in metal shop would this be comparable to a mill? Don't know the pros and cons between these machines.
The metal shapers basically pre-date a Knee mill type machine. designed to make things flat, or keyways. With a dividing head you can also make things like gears, rack gears, and profiled stamping dies. They come in handy today for removing a lot of crusty metal to get down to a good surface, or cutting irregular shaped pieces that may not fit into a traditional milling machine.