I have been looking for a small mill to use in my home gunsmith/workshop
for several years. Originally I started with a Smithy but quickly
learned that the Smithy was not the machine for me. Living in a flood
prone section of Louisiana, I decided early on that whatever I acquired
would have to be small enough and light enough to pick up and move in the
event of a flood. The shop that I was to set it up in was nothing
more than a 24x24 metal building with a cement floor that I had built a
few years ago in order to have a place to do a bit of engine swapping.
Seeing the error of my ways I made an effort to insulate it to make it
usable in the La summer heat. Two inches of Styrofoam helped some
by dropping the afternoon temp to 90 deg. or so but it became apparent
that any serious work would have to be done at night. You just can't
work on other people's guns while sweat is running down your elbows.
Sweat does wonders to gun bluing.
Also, I was becoming more and more aware of
the shortcomings of the Smithy. Lathe was ok if you don't mind not
having a half nut or thread dial. Threading up to a shoulder as on
a gun barrel was real exciting. Tools became sacrificial. Threading
at 180 rpm or so ( my memory is not so good as it used to be, speed may
have been less) called for nerves of steel and lightening fast reactions.
To make things worse the machine always coasted for several turns before
it came to a stop, unless the tool dug into something it wasn't suppose
to dig into! The mill section of the Smithy was a real joke.
The head always managed to come loose and rotate at the most inopportune
times. Ruined as many projects as I did mills until I gave up.
Anyhow, all of this lead up to a need for
a real machine tool. I had found an old Sheldon 11x40 lathe, which
Martin was extremely helpful in finding information for ( Thanks a million
Martin!). {'Twas nothing really - just copy a bunch of numbers
- notice math was involved - and put them into a spread sheet - threading
speed for a quick change gear box - my pleasure. And thanks a billion
back - Gerry sent me some documentation on my lathe that he got from Sheldon.
Martin } Now I needed a mill to go along with it. And a better
shop to put them both in. I SLOWLY built a new shop from concrete
blocks under my house. Good lighting, level floor, a/c and heat and
high enough so that flood water would not be a major problem. Now
to find a mill!
What to buy? My machinist/gunsmith buddy
whom I worked with for years Kept telling me to ignore anything that was
not a "full size" mill, ie. A Bridgeport or Chicago or other 2000 pound
monster. He had two of these and couldn't see anyone doing without
at least one. One major problem with his logic is that I did not
have the room for such a machine Also I don't have access to a forklift
to move on of these things either. Since he is 6'6" and 300# this didn't
seem like a problem to him! After looking around for several years
and not doing anything about buying a mill, I settled on a Grizzly G1007.
I liked the power table feed along with the long, 32", table. I could
have gotten away with the smaller model, G1005, but said what the hell
why not get the biggest and the baddest that I could afford. I considered
the gear-head model but was a bit leery of the flange type motor mounting.
I figured that my luck would be I would wipe the motor two days after the
warranty period and would get stuck paying an outrageous price for some
oddball motor. Murphy's law and all that. Anyhow, I bit the
bullet and ordered the G1007 with a 5" vice.
A week to the day I received a call from the
freight office on the other side of town saying that the mill was on site.
Upon arriving at the office and seeing the package I wondered if I brought
enough truck. The crate the mill was packaged in was enough to support
my whole truck! A pleasant surprise after getting the Smithy years
ago in something that barely kept the rain off it let alone protected the
contents from damage. Getting the crates loaded was no big deal with
a forklift but I was starting to wonder how I was going to get it off my
truck when I got home. After a long ride home thinking all the way
on the how's of my problem I thought that I might be able to build a set
of ramps and drag it off with a come-along. This idea worked after
removing as much of the crate as I could while in the confines of my truck.
Ok, now the thing is on the ground, still 25' from my shop, now what?
The only way that I could come up with was to disassemble it piece by piece
and reassemble it in my shop. This I did over the course of two days.
Some of the pieces posed a real challenge in hauling and reassembling in
place. The whole mill weighs 600+ pounds. The head and table
must weigh well over 100# each. I would never be able to lift these
into the positions they needed to go by myself. My only help was my wife,
who at 5'3" had to work off a platform for everything but the table.
I hope I never have to go through this again!
In all honestly, I will say that the G1007
impressed me as a well made mill. The Stand, on the other hand, did
not. A rather flimsy sheet metal affair that seems to rely on the
weight of the mill to stiffen itself up. I would be much happier
with a homemade stand made from welded 2" angle iron properly cross braced.
If it did not require removing (read that disassembling) the mill to install
a heavier stand I would do it. But I think that I will just live
with what I have for the time being, or at least until memory fades.
So far, nearly all experiences using the mill have been good,
save one incident where the head rotated in the middle of a cut, wiping
out both the project and the ½" mill. I cannot, however, place
the blame on the mill. I should have double checked the tightness
of the two bolts holding the head to the column. This feature was
one of the thing that I did not like about the mill/drills in general.
Nobody that I talked to found this to be a problem, so I decided that I
would not either. It just cost me a mill and a piece of keystock
that I was cutting on. A pretty cheap lesson I suppose.
Upon setting up my mill I found it to be both
square and plumb. The only adjustments that I had to make was install
some jackscrews make up for my slightly irregular floor. I also found that
changing speeds via belt was not as big a deal as I was expecting.
Next to no effort at all. All in all, when I finally got around to
getting a mill/drill, I have been asking myself why I took so long. I
could have been having this much fun years ago!
{ Just a note: Just think - now you can make custom wood boxes for
those special tools. Mill out slots/figures in a plank of wood.}
I took good advice and bought an Aloris tool post set. The system works fine, but I was missing some of the special HSS tool bits that were custom ground for various special tasks. What to do. I also have many Armstrong tool holders and would like to use my large boring bars that I have. Hum - why not design a tool post holder that holds Armstrong tools. I posted the design on the metalworking dropbox and awaited for the design to take place. - Wait you say - no mill, no mill drill. I can mill on my lathe but the chuck has some limitations. - Gosh a friend at work has a machine shop at home. Well - that took almost a year. He was to busy generating custom products for money than getting to my task. Well I finally took delivery. Horror of horrors the dove tail was cut to deep. And a minor design flaw on my side. I solved the dovetail problem by soldering a plate of copper deep on the face of the dovetail. That worked just fine. The steel was leaded, so I figured that helped in the soldering. The other problem - simply mill 1/2" from the bottom - it was now the size my lathe mill could handle. Here are the pictures - somewhat top view and a face side. This is for a AXA - the smallest size Aloris for my 11" Sheldon lathe. Corrected drawing is available - I'll have to check and update the dropbox. Here are the two pictures. Martin
Just a bit of fun - only a few more months to go!
