The tale of the blacksmith, located on "Two baby" creek at the confluence with the Washita river, involved water power initially. As a youngster I investigated the area and saw no remaining sign of a water wheel support foudation. Until the early sixties the Washita was a free flowing and really wild river, prone to flash flooding. I recall one flood where the water flowed a mile wide at points. The same point that the blacksmith/machine shop was located. A large dam now controls the water flow, but prior to it's dedication the yearly floods could certainly have washed away all evidence of a water wheel foundation I suppose.
Thanks guys for adding your anecdotes to this thread.
Mill parts started arriving yesterday. 3" vise, thin parallels and R8 mill cutter shanks. Many more on order, with another 20 items being sourced and priced, but not yet ordered. The expense is quite a bit more than I expected, but layout, fixturing/setup pieces added up. Of course some will be used for the lathe as well. Most of the instruments which I purchased for the lathe will be used with the mill, but still the mill is more expensive to setup with tools than the lathe. My problem is that I know how functional each item is for obtaining decent parts finishing in both lathe and mill. So I keep spending. A newbie certainly wouldn't require many of these to begin with while learning basics, but could add accessories and tooling later as required.
Generalities can get a guy in a lot of trouble with experienced machinists, but I'm trying to address this to those having no experience with these small machines, regardless of having experience with full size machines tools. Functions are the same, but in actual use they are a world apart, everything scaled down on small machines or lacking entirely. Cuts, feeds and speeds comically reduced and total operation time dramatically increased. Great patience is required, but is worth it. If any doubt the accuracy of a small mill and lathe in the hands of a master, check out the functioning gas engines for radial aircraft remote control or functional replica V8 engines. All doubt was removed in my mind! Equally impressive are replica Thompson machine guns, fully functional, in miniature scales along with other famous firearms. These actually fire tiny hand loaded bullets! YouTube is full of videos of both engines and firearms replicas in miniature.
I'll add that jeweler's lathe and micro mill are also used for these projects
For me .001 is typical for what I actually need for and obtain with my small lathe, but at times I reach for 10ths of thousandths (.0005) or so. With inexpensive everything used with hobby lathes this is pretty decent, but takes more time in setup and execution.
Rick C.
