Speaking of motors, here's how I spent a whole day back in late October:
The big 150 HP shavings blower motor up on the roof of the planer flashed out and all 3 coils shorted to ground... Took out two of the main fuses out at the mains supply for the whole mill, the place was in darkness. Luckily the last time that motor blew, we had the crane guy put the replacement plus a spare up there, so all we had to do was maneuver the spare into place this time instead of calling the crane operator in again. Which, to be fair, is still much easier said than done... That thing weighs a good 500 lbs, I'm sure. And the bolt pattern was different than the old one, so we had to flip the spare on its side and drill new holes in the base. Luckily it's just cast iron and not too hard to drill.
And speaking of knives, here's a new toy I got a few weeks ago at work:
It's a Michigan MK72 knife grinder for our planer and chipper knives. It has a 6' long (hence the 72) magnetic bed/chuck, so all I have to do is put the knives in place and flip a switch, and it's ready to go. The old dinosaur we were using before had an old-school clamp bed, so I had to manually go through and clamp all the knives down and make sure they were straight and not overtightened. This thing is saving me SO much time; I can do a set of 6 chipper knives in well under an hour if the guys haven't tried to feed rocks through the chipper and haven't back-ground them too far with the die grinder. I have a few ideas for customizing it a bit for our needs, and it'll be even faster then. In the pic here I had just quickly wired it up and was fiddling with it to make sure it all worked; we got it for pennies on the dollar at a sawmill auction, so it came as-is.
Right now I'm gathering parts and whatnot to build myself a lathe. Nothing huge and really fancy, but I want to be able to do some metalwork with it. I have an old friend who will mill a spindle for me; once I have that done, I can figure out the rest myself, more or less. For a headstock I'm considering using a stripped-out smaller SM-Cyclo gear reducer housing similar to this one:
I tore out all its guts so I can fit different bearings and a larger shaft in it. And it worked out quite well; in the nose end (to the right in the photo) I have a 35mm ID double-race heavy duty ball bearing that fits perfectly, and on the inside behind that, it's already milled out such that a 40mm ID taper roller bearing that I have fits perfectly, which would work great as a thrust bearing. So far I'm not sure what to do for a bearing on the other end; the housing was designed to directly couple to a C-Face motor, so it had quite a small 3/4" ID ball bearing and there isn't much to work with on that end as far as boring it out to fit a larger one. Might have to have a custom cap machined for it to fit another taper bearing, but that wouldn't be a huge job really.
So as far as the spindle goes, I'll probably start with a 1.750" shaft and have it machined down so there are shoulders for the two aforementioned bearings; once they're seated tight that thing won't want to move at all. As for the business end of it, I'll probably have my friend machine a #3 Morse Taper, and bore a hole as large as the taper will allow clear through the length of the spindle for a draw bar etc. Beyond that, I don't really know. I don't know much about different chuck backplate mounting methods or threads yet, so I'll likely talk to my friend and see what he thinks the best option is. He's well into his 70s and has been a machinist for the sawmills around here since the late '50s, so he's done it all and I trust his opinion. You should see his shop - it's small but he has pretty much anything you could ever want or need. Stuff I've never seen or thought of anyway.
It'll be an adventure, to be sure, and I have no idea when it'll be finished (or usable for that matter; I have a feeling I'll be working on and adding to it for years, if it works well). I'm gonna start on it at work though; that's where I have more time and access to materials for now. We have a myriad of old broken machines just rusting away in the weather that I can rob parts from; just have to ask the boss, and he usually doesn't care at all.
Stuck with the taps and dies. 
