Mini-Mill Introduction
The second major machine for the shop is a Mini-Mill. Like the Mini-Lathe, it's been a good 20 years since I last used a mill, and even then it was not very often. If we wanted a flat surface it was the shaping machine that was used rather than a mill.
You can get by without a mill, by using milling slides on the lathe, but that is very limiting, and to be honest, it's a lot of faffing about, so I bought the mini mill rather than add more to the lathe.
Because it has been so long since I used a mill, I bought some books on the subject. Two are from the workshop practice series, and one is not.
The Workshop Practice series of books cover all sorts of subjects, and are reasonably cheap. The first book I bought was "Vertical Milling in the Home Workshop" (Workshop Practice Series Number 2) by Arnold Throp.
Now I don't know who this Arnold Throp is (or perhaps was) but this book is just about totally useless. It tells you almost nothing about using a mill, nothing about how to set it up, or even how to do various operations. It mentions a lot of operations but tells you nothing about them. I've been involved with various magazines, and book authors for many years, and I've proof read a lot of stuff. It is painfully clear that this book has not been proof read by someone from it's intended audience. It it had been, it would not have been published. Fortunately the other two books are very much better.
"Milling a complete course" (Workshop Practice series number 35) by Harold Hall.. This is essentially a reprint of a series of articles that appeared in "Model Engineers Workshop" magazine, and the quality of the articles does reflect this. It covers a lot of subjects and by means of a number of projects introduces a lot of operations that can be performed on the mill.
Milling by Stan Bray is a more expensive book, for a start it's hardback. This is very much the best of the three books, and does go into the actual milling operations, and there is a lot of tips in the text.
If I have a complaint, it's that none of the books I have read so far, take what to me is a very logical progression towards milling.
First you have to set up the mill, (Tramming I understand it's called) I found out how to do this on the web, and it's not hard. Then you need to set up the work, then do the machining, None of the books take the approach - "to do this kind of operation you need to do this..." The explanation is there in Milling, and WSP 35, but it usually forms part of another explanation. However the information is out there you just need to find it.
