Hi All,
Found this site a short while ago and what a wealth of knowledge and ideas!
I am a man in my best years (I like to think) normally working with IT and information matters. I have several areas of interest, the main one being model railroading. The reason for starting with engineering and adding metalworking equipment to my workshop was to be able to produce all those small round things and drives for MRR-vehicles.
But let's stick to the metal working side of my interests, at least here on this site.
I started off with a small bench-size drillpress and shortly afterwards a micro lathe, an MJ-189 (Unimat 4 clone). These are very versatile and well functioning small machines, but... After having purchased the two books by GH Thomas and started subscribing to Model Engineers Workshop to read up on metal working, this part of the hobby branched out to become its own. Having started off by trying the machine out, I made a few things from GHTs books using the micro machine as far as I could - and it could do a lot! My first and simple version of the Universal Pillar Tool built from a cheap power drill drill-press stand was the result.
Shortly after this there were ads from ARC about the C3 lathe at a very reasonable price - even with shipping to Sweden added to the price! A very good purchase now working at its best. Only a year later there was a sale at a local store that provided me with a small Super X1L mill. So now I have a typical messy Mini Workshop in which I try to produce the tooling that is either nice-to-have or too expensive buying. Furthermore these activities will give more hands-on experience and make me do less errors as time goes (because I do make errors
).
Even though my three children now can take care of themselves, there is a the day job, my dear wife, and our house to take care of. All resulting in too little time in the hobby area. Therefore the pace of creating and producing items and describe them here will be a slow activity.
I noted that you do like pictures, and I will include such, but in other threads in other subgroups here like my shop, the gallery, etc. but to avoid an up rising I include a small picture of the harbor part of my MRR-layout.
BR
/Peter
