Thanks for the welcome Dave.
Eric,
It's really more a "modify this whatsit" to work better and/or "fix this dang thang that what broke" then build from scratch shop. I've built things from scratch but not real projects like a steam engine or such. I have had a hankering to build a scale model of a Ingersol Rand air compresser that I saw at one time. Impressive machine. It was a flat opposed twin, double acting with a 24 inch bore. The kind where you start it, keep oil in it and then sometime in the future, like 30 years later you turn it off. Very cool.
My shop is cluttered/dirty only durning a project. I learned from my mother that if you leave everthing scattered from here to breakfast it takes forever to find stuff. This is what she always did when cooking, stuff scattered all across the horizon, flour on the ceiling. So I don't live that way.
The Sherline. Well, there's several things I like about them. For one, he only uses standard screws/fasteners that you can buy easily except where he can't. Like a 20 tpi feedscrew. Other than that they are off the shelf and he even tells you what size they are. He'll sell them to you if you want.
They do everything in their plant except painting, all their own parts. I appreciate that and it's getting more and more uncommon here in America.
He has a wide range of tooling to go with his machines and if the tool is appropriate for the lathe and the mill it'll fit both. He feels (and has said so) that if he comes up with a new attachment and you have to modify your machine, no matter how old to make it work then he's failed as a designer. I really like that.
The instructions that come with everything he makes are written like you'd see here: plain English. I get so tired of instructions that were translated from French by a Chinese guy from Italy who was badly hung over that day.
So yes, I believe one could say I'm smitten.
Of course I do wish the lathe was a six incher . . . or maybe an eight . . .
Thanks for the welcome gentlemen.
Cat
