Shop Tour 7: Anthoine Machine Shop, Fort Valley, GA 

THIS right here is a WORKING MUSEUM! Holy COW! I could spend HOURS if not DAYS just taking it all in! WOW just WOW!

Awesome to see all that old equipment or should I say ventage equipment and most of it still in use. This is part of America that is lost. Thank you for showing the history of what was that built this great country and is still being used today in the 21 Century.

An absolute classic shop. The guy is pretty classic too. A skilled artisan craftsman who knows where everything is, has the total inventory in his head too. So much knowledge and ability in fact he only has room left for about 50 words. Sadly a dying breed who will vanish without a better epitaph than "it was untidy".

holy cow that was beyond cool,, you really should do part two can't just leave it there

Excellent step back in time. I could almost smell the oil and hear the wood floor squeak. Thanks Keith.

Amazing old shop.

Wow what a shop thanks for sharing

Thank you so much for the tour, absolutely amazing. I could easily spend all day wandering around just looking at stuff.

I had the good fortune to work in a similar shop and with machines like these. I still have the Exact Sabastian lathe that I once ran 57 hrs a week for nearly 10 yrs. The shops weren't as old but some of the machines were. Thanks for the videos Mr. Ruker. The American made lathes are the finest and toughest ever made.

i like the way that old man stands, i can tell he has done a lot of hard work in his life.

Amazing. Life should preserve the owners, too. A true gem :)

Very cool indeed! I did not know there were shops still operating with belt systems as a working business. A working museum in itself.

Great side trip Keith, thanks for putting it up....Dave

God Id go crazy there , I'd have to get to run and use everything in that shop. It might take years but man what a wonderful step back in time. One of my first apprenticeship shops had 48" VBM flat belt drive . I put two years working there doing all kinds of machining. From spray welding rollers and welded up journals , most very large for a steel mill . 72 hour weeks in 1976 . I wouldn't have changed a thing if I could relive it. This is the very best shop you visited , may not be clean and orderly but you'll never find one that's lasted that long. I know this is old vid but I just found it. God bless you. Thanks for sharing, ill never be able to see another shop this means ALOT to me.

Oh my god I can die happy now. I grew up in a world that disappeared under my feet. And that office! Thanks for showing this. I didn't think anything like this existed anymore. Speaking of winding motors. I know the guy who designed and built the Prius prototype. He designed and built the motor for it too.

Never throw anything away - that's an understatement .... Nice place ... almost like a museum.

What an incredible place, thank you for showing it to us Keith.

Amazing history and equipment

Now that was a great share Keith ! What a great ole shop .. Thumbs up .

Great place, Mr Rucker, once again showed us a place out of time, but with so many of those hidden treasures that you could turn around for days and weeks and you would not see everything inside. Fantastic videos, great equipment.

I live right by Warner and swasey and westing house cleveland Ohio, unfortunately no remains of anything in those buildings but the thought of what once was absolutely blows me away

A slice of metal working machinery history. Thanks for a great video!

Brilliant. Fantastic. Ace. A living breathing skilled factory without a computer in sight. Keep your workshop alive ++++

i used to hear from my father about this, shop ..today,,i had a chance to see it alive ..thanks, dad .thanks Mr keith

This is now in my favorites. What a gem of a video.......

Amazing place and really nice people! Thanks for the tour!

Thank you Keith that was a truly wonderful shop tour a lot of history there. Matt C

Can't begin to tell you how much I enjoy these visits. Truly this is great.

WOW. The Anthoine shop is absolutely brilliant. I'm sorry I live 12,000 miles away, otherwise I'd be down there watching them every day. Fantastic. That's not junk piled in every corner, that's character and history. Once again, WOW!!

The floors, all the machines, the clutter, the books, just really neat. thanks for sharing this Keith.

WOW! What a shop! I would love to own that sign on the roof there. Amazing! Living museum :-)

What an amazing workshop So good to see it being used still thanks for showing me Keith

What a wonderful old shop! Amazing video, thanks for sharing

What a great tour Keith. It just goes to show that these old shops are appreciated in our communities. The modern shops can't be bothered to broach keyways or cut pipe threads for those one of a kind projects. Our young men and women should visit these places to see how it all began.

What a gem of a place! You could set an old Hitchcock movie in there. As someone who is a little slow on the cleaning up side of things, I felt quite at home! Thanks for finding this place and showing it to us. Thanks to the owners for allowing us in there too.

Man, there's some absolutely beautiful equipment in there. Patternmakers from the 1800s and early 1900s put some real artistry into the castings for those old beasts, and it's a testament to their skill and decades of care and maintenance that some of those machines are still running today.

That was awesome! A true good 'ole boy right there!

Great show!!! Thanks Keith

"Unlike a lot of folks, my parents didn't bring me here as a child". Brilliant start! Let everyone know what's really important to you.

wow! That was a fantastic video. Metal paradise :D

Wonderful, what a treasure! I could spend days in a place like that. Would've been neat to see upstairs. It occurs to me, that running everything off a line shaft would keep the temperature down, not having a bunch of electric motors running.

Fascinating place right there.

Thanks for showing this Keith. It's very satisfying knowing that there still are shops/businesses/individuals out there that can do good old fashioned quality work in a shop that doesn't even have a computer. The stories if only those walls could talk.....

Wow! I could rummage around in there for weeks. Amazing shop !!

Awesome...thanks for sharing

I love all shops like that all cluttered with stuff means people are working in them or has worked in them

Built to last and still going strong.

Thanks for this trip back wonderful machines. I see on the roof that fan was driven with a long rope or samstiing Best regard Bosse

I love seeing that history and the fact that someone is still operating the shop. I hope there is a trainee that can take over and run the shop in the future. I'd say there is a lot of knowledge in there that could be shared. Thanks Keith for the tour, Greg.

Incredible! That place is awesome! Fantastic!

THANK YOU...for sharing.

The machines were built to last. A testimony to the skill of the makers.

I enjoyed the tour Keith I have a 16 inch Monark .N0 2 cin mill a 5 ton arbor press with the top of the shaft beat over and a 18 inch do all band saw so I'm still in the old world also LOL

this place is like heaven for me

My brother has one of those Ga Tech grinders. It was made by our fathers brother.

Beautiful machines/shop Keith! Thanks very much for putting this video together! Cheers, Doug

Great shop tour, love it.

man you hit a goldmine there! so much fun to be able to look inside a original shop that! really love how humble and nice the owners are

We use Anthoine all the time. They have never let us down on anything they do and they are a great go to for the hard to find items. I wish they had ran some of it. I have seen it up close and it is awesome to watch run. The ceiling fans up front even run on the belt system.

Hi Kieth, Wow, what a great shop tour! That is a true living history museum! Thanks for bringing us along! 👍👍👍

That was indeed cool and I loved the character of all the stuff piled around. That's how I "organize" my wood shop, too! I do hope, though, that there is some kind of plan to either establish the shop as a museum of sorts or to begin passing stuff along. Otherwise, the machines and tools and story will be lost. We visited a windmill factory that has mostly be left as it was on the day it closed. It is a fascinating place and I've no doubt Athoine's would be as well.

This is amazing I’ve always been fascinated by old machinery this is amazing thank you for sharing this Kieth I love how the line shafts sound so complicated but once you see them in operation and the components they are quite simple not that I’m saying I could take one apart and rebuild it lol I’d love to give it ago though amazing engineering simple but effective and it’s still running perfect wow we live in a world now where it’s clicked on by a button for electricity we have it easy the old timers were amazing engineers what with the work they created and the skills to keep it all running thanks again Kieth god bless

Thank you ! I love old stuff!

I absolutely loved this video. Thank you so much for this tour. I grew up in Macon, and worked in the summer of 1964 on the assembly line at the Blue Bird Body Company building school buses in Fort Valley. I had no idea that the Anthoine Machine Shop was just down the road. I would love to visit.

How absolutely fantastic is that place!? Wow! I really do appreciate you sharing that with us Keith. Just love to see at least one piece of Americana still alive. Thanks for this great tour!

That place looks like a treasure! South Bend , Brown and Sharpe, and Monarch are the only machinery names I've ever heard of in this video.

i like the fans running off the pulleys

"Amazing place" doesn't do it justice!

Nice! Living history...

Thank you Keith! I liked that small metal planer, too!

This is awesome Keith! I love the walk through in an old shop like this. People who don't like this kind of place don't care about history and the meaning of it. This country was built in shops like this and to see one like this still in use is wonderful. I could spend days in a place like this just looking around. I would love to see more of these type videos and so would my friends so keep 'em coming Keith!

Some amazing machines

Unreal amount of history in that shop. I bet that the owner knows where every nut and bolt is. I worked for a boss once that was an organization and clean freak, he would have had a heart attack if he saw that shop.

Keith that's a great video. Like you I could spend two days in that place. That 6" pipe thread machine . very cool. Thanks Keith for that video. and all your videos.

awesome!!! A step back in time!

That is one awesome workshop.

Wow, I thought our shop was old! Great tour!

Love that Shop !!!

That was really a pleasure to watch.

Super cool shop! A lot of that stuff obviously hasn't been used for a long time. There is bound to be stuff in there for a lot of jobs if you could only find it.

@5 min. Look at the old vice on the left hand side! Beautiful place!

Wow, that place deserves a 1-2 hour professional documentary filmed on the premises. Thanks for the video Keith!

great Video its nice to see the old machine shops, greetings from the Netherlands

Awesome video Keith! I love seeing this old stuff still in action. thanks.

Awesome shop!

Another great shop tour!! Thanks for sharing

Smart, hard working, fine, nice southern gentlemen.

love the bench filling system

wow, really cool. great tour

Keith that was just amazing. I hope you got good pics of all the machines.

Thanks for this great video. I especially liked the "no credit or debit cards" sign. I'll bet a lot of contracts were a hand shake. Sure would love to see this shop in action. Wonder where the old workers are today. Can you just hear the rattle and bang from the good ole days, where many earned less than a dollar a day and a dollar bought a lot back then. I have worked for less than a dollar an hour back in the day. I wish those guys the very best in that shop. They are the old USA and made this country it what it is today......Ken

What a near shop! Great video!

All I have to say is - WOW.

That was amazing.

Very cool! Thanks for showing this to us. I agree that American made some of the finest lathes ever built. I liked the shaper. I have a similar Smith and Mills in my shop, I also liked the Brown and Sharp horizontal. I wish I had the vertical head to put on mine. All the best! Mike

Wish I had a place like that near by just to visit

about the coolest shop ive ever seen ,wish the uk had some old stuff left

I would love to get in there to organise and clean that place up.

This would be a great place to take OCD neat freaks to torture them! Very cool place. I'd love to see it. I never imagined there were places that still ran line shafts!

Very nice tour please make some more videos about it :).