Pops is looking to add yet another tool to the shop and is thinking about a lathe. He's actually bidding on one that's way up in Ohio!
However, he asked me which I thought would be more usable in the garage, a lathe or a small mill. Says he's seen guys that can make a lathe work like a mill, but I wonder if it's worth the hassle.
For what we do, I would think that it would be easier to use a mill as a lathe than the other way around.
For knife-making, something that I'm not doing big production on, a mill would work great for guards and pommels, and even some handle work.
For general car stuff and woodworking, the mill could do a thousand little things that you'd be hardpressed to get a lathe to do. Right?
A small table-top mill wouldn't take up much floor space, which is always at a premium, but a small lathe (something you could reasonably do wood projects with) would take up at least 6'.
Is tooling for a good mill that expensive? How hard would it be to make a lathe work like a mill? If the prices were similar, which would you get to outfit a small multi-function shop?
However, he asked me which I thought would be more usable in the garage, a lathe or a small mill. Says he's seen guys that can make a lathe work like a mill, but I wonder if it's worth the hassle.
For what we do, I would think that it would be easier to use a mill as a lathe than the other way around.
For knife-making, something that I'm not doing big production on, a mill would work great for guards and pommels, and even some handle work.
For general car stuff and woodworking, the mill could do a thousand little things that you'd be hardpressed to get a lathe to do. Right?
A small table-top mill wouldn't take up much floor space, which is always at a premium, but a small lathe (something you could reasonably do wood projects with) would take up at least 6'.
Is tooling for a good mill that expensive? How hard would it be to make a lathe work like a mill? If the prices were similar, which would you get to outfit a small multi-function shop?