Grant St. Update

I haven't been working on the Z3 Coupe much lately, because I've had another project that was consuming me.  The Grant St. Garage is now a machine shop!  Well, sort of...

It's kind of a set of sad stories, and it started with the purchase of a tool stand on Craigslist.  At least, that was the way it was advertised, but the heavy oak stand I saw in the picture didn't look much like a tool stand! The story was that it was custom-built to hold a hand-cranked grain mill, and was designed to be as heavy as possible.  I'll say - it weighs about 150 pounds!

The seller was an older woman who, for health reasons, was moving into assisted living and selling off all her possessions. She shed a tear or two just telling us the story. I gladly paid the asking price of $40. It must have cost many multiples of that when custom-made. Dave Russell helped me wrestle it into the Scion xB - it was a real bear!

It had four holes drilled in the top for the grain mill. I used a 5/8" plug cutter to make some face-grain oak plugs, and plugged the holes, sanded the top, and stained and refinished it. Too nice for shop furniture, but that's how I'll use it, as you'll see below.  Here it is after plugging:

At the time, I had no idea what I was going to mount on it, but then I saw on Craigslist a Micro-Mark mini-mill advertised as "new in box" and priced at about half the new price.  I called the seller and said, "What's the story?"  And it was another sad story!  His father bought not only the mill, but also a 7X14 lathe and a micro drill press with X-Y table seven years previously. He planned to make a "hit and miss" engine, but sadly, he died before he could even unpack the equipment.  It had been sitting in the original boxes in the son's garage ever since. I bought all of it, and  paid less than half the price his father paid seven years earlier.

By the way, it turns out the seller and his wife are enthusiastic attendees of the concerts of Allegro Chamber Orchestra, the group that Mary Ellen and I play with in the summer. They saw my Allegro bumper sticker and we had a nice conversation about all that.

So then, Dave Russell and John Zimmerman did that invaluable service of "standing around and thinking" to decide where all this stuff would be set up.  We decided on a "galley kitchen" style arrangement in the corner by the bathroom.  Dave was also very helpful in unpacking the gear and getting it installed on the stands. I had to drill new holes in that beautiful oak stand!

EDIT: Little did I know, when I posted that this was a set of sad stories, that there would be a really tragic one only days later. I'm afraid this will be the last post that mentions my dear friend Dave. He and his wife Michelle were killed in a horrific motorcycle accident that claimed five lives. I will surely miss them!

END EDIT

Over the past few weeks, I've been slowly assembling all the equipment, and there was one more sad story: the mill was defective, right out of the box! Too bad it didn't have a seven-year warranty. The problem was clearly on the circuit board that controlled the motor, but I didn't really have all I needed to troubleshoot it.

So, I managed to track down John Gerling, who is apparently the nationwide expert for fixing the circuit boards in these lathes and mills (they use the same board).  His business model is certainly friendly - send the board, and he'll troubleshoot it. If he can't fix it, no charge. If he can, a flat $50 fee plus shipping. He fixed mine! His web site is http://www.repaircontrol.com/ if you ever need your mill or lathe fixed...

The lathe came with its own stand (a $99 option), but it looks so spindly in comparison to that oak monster that I may have to make another oak stand for the lathe. It even came with a four-jaw chuck, a live center and a drill chuck. If you can't visualize all that, just know that it's all good.

I didn't particularly need a micro drill press, and considered selling it on eBay, but once I got it all put together and mounted on a base, it was just so cute I decided to keep it. I put a glove in the picture to give some scale - this thing is little! The largest drill bit it will handle is 1/4".

And here's the finished machining center! I still need to add a lot of tooling for the mill and lathe (essentially, I'll double my investment), and I need a metal-cutting band saw. Right now all I have is a hack saw, and that gets old pretty quick. Now I've just got to learn how to use all this stuff...