Hi all, I know some of you chaps are or have been in the engineering industry and moved your skills over to woodwork. I'm thinking about doing the opposite but only for hobby reasons.
Recently I've been thinking about jigs and machine fence adaptions, sliding carriages, hold down devices etc, well not only recently but for quite some time. I have a welding machine (mig welder) and some hand tools but thats about it for metalwork, no it's not I have a tap and die set on the way.
I have made a few items from metal but it's mainly been sheet metal and if I have wanted to make an item which is fastened with threads I have to weld a nut onto the sheet metal to hold the thread. It's a bit ugly and clumsy hence the tap and die set.
I have started to think that maybe I want to take things further, so I was wondering about a metalwork lathe to turn items and maybe a milling machine too. Does anyone have any ideas? which machines might be suitable at a reasonable price. I probably won't need to use them that much but so maybe a few hundread rather than thousand pounds.
Just thinking about options at the moment so if there are is any guidance out there I'd appreciate the input.
Mark