I'm part way into building the new workshop. I have a garage that is so full that I have to take things out to get into it. As well as the tools in the garage I have two lathes, Two full sized drill presses, two Jones and Shipman sensitive drills, a BCA jig borer and a Jones and Shipman 1400 surface grinder stored temporarily at work (all these are machines which need work varying from cleaning and repainting to complete reconditioning). What I _don't_ need is any more tool projects!
There was this chap on Ebay selling a Beaver turret mill in an apparently tatty but refurbishable condition, on the basis of £10 starting bid, buy it or I'll scrap it. It had taken two days to attract any bids and was still in the £112 region on the seventh and last day.
What the heck, I thought and used the wife's sniping program to set up a £142 bid. I expected the bidding to take off during the day and for the mill to go for the mid hundreds, (but you never know).
I am now the owner of a Beaver MkII VBRP mill with a 48"x10" table and an INT30 quill. It needs a complete overhaul and replacement/remanufacture of things like all the handles and some of the table feed gearbox but nothing exotic. The seller even helped me to separate the arm/head and table/knee from the column and load the bits onto _his_ trailer which I borrowed to take it all home.
It looks like this year is the year of building the new workshop and next year will be the year of rebuilding machine tools. One of these years I'll get round to serious model making but at the moment I'm just having too much fun getting prepared for it
Mark Rand RTFM