I don't need a Milling Machine....

[ZeroGravitas]

...but it sure would be nice. Any of you metal folks out there have suggestions for a home shop vertical mill?

I'm sure it's more $ than I have, so I'll play the lottery this week. I see how close the professionals get to final inlet with a mill, and I'm a bit jealous. My method is OK, but leaves about 1/16" to 1/8" to hand inlet. I bet it's closer to 1/64" with a mill.
Every 1/16" to remove during inletting is many many phases of removing just the blackened wood. (An old gun advert said the their tolerances were the thickness of a layer of smoke, and that's about what it is removed during each pass)

Hand job of hogging out before inletting.
Careful layout, then hand drill the bulk of the wood


Chisel out the web, and ready for inlet


Jim Kobe's pre-inlet hog-off with a milling machine (from the AR forum)
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g83/J ... t001-1.jpg

[tfbncc]

Check out Harbor Freight Tools. The most popular mill would be their "mini-mill" series. Runs about $600. But they have a smaller one that doesn't get advertised as much. The "Micro-mill" for $340.00 approximately. I own one and have been extremely happy with it. It's biggest shorcoming would be the length and travel of the bed (about 8 inches left/right and 5 inches front/back). But littlemachineshop.com sells a bed extension kit that almost doubles the travel (about $120 for the kit). Since these are Chinese imports, you will spend some time tweaking the machine to get the best performance, but for the money they do quite well and you won't break the bank buying one. Until you start looking at the price of tooling, that is.

A little bit more info. I had to do some checking before I posted this. The Mini Mill series is probably the best value if you have the funds. And, it's widely sold by different vendors. Harbor Freight, Grizzly, Micro-mark, plus a couple of others I can't remember. It's all the same machine made by Xieg manufacturing in China.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/d ... mber=44991
http://www.ares-server.com/Ares/Ares.as ... t&ID=82573
http://www.grizzly.com/products/Mini-Mi ... hine/G8689

[blackeagle603]

Looks like a nice piece of wood. What's the project that stick is for?

[ZeroGravitas]

tfb, I will check those out, thanks

BE, A '63ish 32" Superposed Lighting Broadway for my 6' 7" brother. Off the rack just doesn't fit that dude. This snazzy chunk of claro is going to give him a 16 1/2" LoP, and I'm setting the grip back nearly an inch so he doesn't have his first knuckle pulling the trigger.

[DwightG]

I would recommend buying a larger machine than the mini-mills if you can possibly afford it. I think you'll be very frustrated by limited capacity trying to do that size work in one of them. I bought a small knee mill in 1977 much like the picture below. I made a riser for the head that greatly improved its usefulness/capacity as well as added a power table feed. It's much larger than the mini mills but still small garage size. I think Grizzly sells something similar. I've since bought other larger machines but this one still gets used quite a bit. Also, don't neglect the used market. I bought an old Brown & Sharpe #2 Universal mill for $750 at a farm auction that's done a huge amount of work. There are occasionally some good deals on ebay if you can find one close enough to go pick up. Of course, buying tooling for it is the giant hidden expense but you can absorb that over many years.

[DwightG]

One other thought regarding milling machines. The spindle speed requirements for metal and wood are quite a bit different and most machines don't have the range to cover both. At work I typically run a 1/2" carbide router bit (in a CNC router) at around 14000 rpm. In steel you'd run more in the 1000-2000 range depending on the steel. Even slower, around 500rpm with high speed steel cutters. The slower rpms will cut wood, it's just harder to get a decent finish with a tendency to splintering. It would still beat hand chiseling for control however. If you'll also want to do metal, get a metal cutting machine and make do with the slower rpm in wood (just use sharp tools with deep flutes).

[Darrell]

Speaking of, why not use a router on a table? I'd think you could build a jig to get out just what you wanted.

[gandalf23]

Check local auctions, http://www.craigslist.org, and ebay for mills and such. Also check out http://www.practicalmachinist.com in their for sale section. My dad bought a Bridgeport mill a few years ago for $1,000ish at an auction. We just bought a 1970s CNC Bridgeport for $600ish a few months ago. It's been sent to a guy to upgrade the CNC stuff, but I think we'll end up being out the door under $3,000. It helps that we're in no rush. However you go tooling will be expensive, but again, look around at auctions and on the internets. I went to an auction of a old machine shop where the owner had passed away and the kids were selling everything last winter. Wish I'd brought more money and I had a large truck and forklift, I'd've bought a lot more than I did. It was all selling for scrap prices. Maybe something like that is going on nearby to you. I heard that a lot of shops are getting rid of their non-CNC machines, so you might just ask around at local machine shops, they may have something collecting dust in the back they'll sell for close to scrap prices. Also see if there is a local home shop machinists club/meeting, maybe someone there could point you int he right direction, and you may be able to get tooling from them cheap. Several guys at our regularly bring tooling and stuff to the meetings to sell. If you were local I'd give you a good deal on a Gorton panamill. The only big thing to watch out for on old iron is some of them take odd sized tooling that's not easy to find and may be expensive when you do.

[HTRN]

...but it sure would be nice. Any of you metal folks out there have suggestions for a home shop vertical mill?

Buy the biggest thing you can afford, then borrow money and buy bigger, because it's never going to be big enough.

If possible, stay away from the "Horror Freight" stuff.

Right now, machine tool sales, both new and used, are cooking, so finding a deal is going to be tough. My personal opinion? Buy a 49" B'port, preferably a Step pulley machine(add a VFD for speed control), but your looking in the four thousand dollar range for a clean one.

I can tell you where to buy a "Mill/Drill" but unfortunately, it's a "round column" machine(like a drill press), instead of the square column job Dwight posted a picture of. I believe he wants 800-1000 for it. He has a bunch of machines for sale, as he's an industrial dealer:

Mullin Machinery and Repair Srvs LLC
101 Church St
Matawan, NJ 07747
732-566-1211