A Great Tidy of the area, a quarter of the area of the workshop, is going on as a lathe and milling machine return like Prodigal Sons after having lived at a friend's shop for almost twenty years now.
He never did get around to setting them up so each has been gone through and woken up, the lathe still ongoing.
The milling machine is one of those made in China and exported by Sieg for the likes of Grizzly, Harbor Freight, and Micromark. It was still on the pallet and covered in twenty-year-old cosmoline after first being purchased by another friend (also named Fred) who then decided it didn't match the décor of his living room, so traded it to me. Still on the skid, it then went to the first-mentioned friend's shop as I lacked the conditioned space for it and my Atlas lathe.
To be honest, the basic components are passable, but the assembly was horrible bordering on the ludicrous. I've torn it down and rebuilt it, and it is as good as it will get. There is little out there in the same size class, so it will have to do.
When he originally bought it, Fred also bought all the tooling then available for it, so it comes well-equipped. I have a large supply of cutters, so this thing can now be considered "in service".
The lathe is quite another thing, an old 1950s Atlas 618 6" screw machine of impeccable quality. Cleanup and "waking" this machine is a joy. I had to buy a bench, then re-engineer it quite a bit to make it a bit more robust (I'm an engineer, not a carpenter). Right now I'm waiting on new belts before bolting up the pulley sheave frame and motor.
The tooling for this guy is also pretty complete, especially when my hoard of cutters gets folded in. This machine also has a horizontal milling head as an accessory and the headstock spindle runs on big roller-bearings so it can easily stand the loads.
Now that the workshop is insulated and conditioned, I do have more space for such things, so these replace the modeller's tools I've been limited to by space, a pair of good ol' Unimats.
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