Works Fine

Description says it works fine.

Best Regards Tom.

Looks like the bigger one. Not the RF30/31, but the larger one you sometimes see. No not an RF45. The RF45 is a bed mill. My buddy had one of the bigger round column mills. It looked exactly the same as my RF30 except very noticeably larger and heavier. His was definitely a better quality machine QCed by Jet instead of Harbor Freight. His was pretty good for a hobby machine, but he got rid of it ultimately for a bed mill in the RF45 class to replace it. Same reason most folks complain about round column mills. Raise the head and loose your location.

I had an RF30 from Harbor Freight, and some days I miss it. (not often) I actually used it to make parts to do repairs on other better mills a few times in a pinch. I do have a smaller round column mill drill I kept, and yes I use it. Looks like a baby version of the RF30. I use it mostly for positional drilling and occasionally face two parts to the same (if unknown) dimension, but I have milled parts with it in a pinch. My little one does not have a fine feed on the quill, so I use spacers, gages, and the quill stop to set depth. Then just lock the quill hard. I setup the the quill lock to use a vise handle since the anemic lever screw it came with was just not up to the job. A lot of times for a simple part its just a lot faster than programming the CNC or even using midi mode and the jog wheel on the CNC mills.

I'll probably never get rid of that little one, but I do plan to pick up a bigger manual mill again when the time is right. Probably a Taiwanese import knee mill through Precision Mathews. I'm pretty impressed with the Chinese 14x40 lathe I got from Matt (for the price), but even Matt admits he gets better machines from the Taiwanese plants (for more money) than direct from China.

If I had no mill at all and I was in comfortable driving distance I would probably make a low ball bid on the one in that listing. Its obviously sat unused for a long time and been allowed to rust, but you can make parts with it in a pinch. Maybe not high precision parts, but useable parts.