The new shed is not the only change that has taken place at "Craigmill" !
The Raglan lathe has been replaced, a cutter grinder added to the tooling, a MUCH better pillar drill purchased and the F1 mill fully converted to PC control.

The Raglan was still performing well but I wanted a quick change gearbox to make feed rate adjustment easier. I searched around and monitored e-bay for a gearbox or even another lathe without any luck. Then my luck changed, a friend had purchased an EMCO Maximat 11 lathe through an advert in a local paper a couple of years ago. While in his care it wasn't used very much and eventually he decided to advertise it for sale. I made him an offer and the lathe was mine! It is a joy to use and although accessories for these lathes are notoriously expensive this one came with 3-jaw, 4-jaw independent and 4-jaw self centering chucks as well as travelling and fixed steadies. The Raglan was moved to the workshop at Kerr's Miniature Railway and the EMCO installed in my workshop. This was not as easy as it sounds as even with the milling head removed the EMCO is a seriously heavy piece of kit. However both lathes were soon up and working.

The EMCO was originally purchased by a gentleman as his retirement present to himself with nearly a full set of accessories, some of which are no longer with the lathe and after his death the machine lay unused for a spell before my friend purchased it. As a result of these periods of idleness the lathe needed a lot of TLC to bring it back to proper operation, little things like the carriage stop adjusting screw seemed to be rusted solid but it was just that the preservative grease had hardened on the threads. The lathe has a two speed motor with reversing facilities and spindle speeds are selected by a fully geared headstock drive with the gears running in an oilbath. More details are available at Lathes.co.uk

The Maximat has a milling head attached to the rear of the lathe with a six-speed geared drive. It has a 2MT spindle so all the tooling for the Raglan mill will fit this machine. I haven't used it for milling yet but it runs smoothly and has the advantage that the head can be tilted allowing for angled drilling.

When I started to build "Sweet Pea" I used a Clarke Hobby Bench Drill from Machine Mart. This drill might be fine for drilling wood etc. but is definitely not accurate enough for model engineering. I couldn't understand why the loco valve gear jammed solid when all the fixings were tightened up. The reason was that the Clarke drill table was not at right angles to the column and the piston rod tapped holes were squint in both crossheads and other drilled holes were less that perfect. A local second hand machine dealer supplied the "Startrite" drill that I now use and I'm confident that any squint holes will be my fault and not the machine's. The Raglan Mill is still performing well though the X-axis feedscrew may need attention soon as there is a bit of free play developing.

This Alexander Grinder was a lucky purchase from e-bay. Normally these machines go for in excess of £250 but I got this one for £150 because the seller described it as a router sharpener instead of a cutter grinder so there were only two other bidders rather than the dozen or so who normally chase these grinders. It works well and I've sharpened engraving cutters for a friend but have yet to master the sharpening of milling cutters. I suspect I might have to make a jig to correctly sharpen these items.

This last view is taken from the door of the workshop looking towards the F1 mill now fully converted with the ungainly EMCO metalwork removed and sitting next to the PC ( which has been upgraded since the photo was taken ) with the industrial LCD to the left of the mill, the box above the screen is the box housing the Xylotex driver boards and power supply.