Yep, finally. After selling the Benchmaster, Master of Benches last January, I have finally picked up another one. The same points I made then still stand, really. The hangar isn’t wired up for 240 power (or meaningful amounts of power in general) yet, so having a Bridgeport would largely mean having a 2000 pound paperweight. I don’t believe in round column mill-drills. This meant waiting for one of the relatively few numbers of square/box column bench machines to show up on the used market… and those things keep their value.

I decided to sell on the Benchmaster because while it’s very cute and collectible, it was missing “modern mill” features I cared about. Mostly, that little thing didn’t have a quill. It was probably the most annoying thing about using it, since a drill chuck took up much of the Z axis travel and only the bed/knee feed was available. It’s patterned on American milling machines of the early 20th century, and most of them did not have quills or heads set up for Z travel either. Back then, drilling was considered much more of a separate operation from milling.

Luckily, a local antique machine collector responded to my sale ad. That’s really the best possible outcome for the thing, as it’s 100% a rock solid vintage machine that weighed probably thrice as much as a typical modern “mini mill” and would be at home with bulky cast iron friends of similar vintage!

Twenty ice ages later, I finally made a move when a Grizzly G0704 mid-sizer came up for sale locally at what I call “regret pricing”

Here it is, mounted to the heavy bench I built just for such a machine all the way back in November of 2023… and which had been used largely to pile unsorted tooling and cutters since then, because there’s been no mill.

This one came from middle Georgia, and the seller had bought it a few years ago to convert to a CNC mill. That’s a fairly common reason people buy the G0704, as it turns out, since it is a fairly basic machine that comes with a DC spindle motor, rudimentary controller, and no digital scales.

In the sale was also the entire CNC conversion kit; it’s a generic Chinese package with big stepper motors and pulleys/belts, and the Linux CNC computer to run it. And finally, a set of metric R8 collets and a kit of (carbide, as it turns out) endmills from 3mm to 12mm.

Basically, dude got in a bit over his head, ran out of time due to life obligations, and the project never materialized. Completely reasonable decision to sell it upriver to me, and I’m not gonna dunk on that. After all, “Got in over my head” is my M.O. and only because I don’t have life obligations. Above, we’re preparing to pull the thing out of his basement with a baby excavator (which was later used to sling load everything into Vantruck)

I want a baby excavator now. I mean, I always wanted one after seeing them in catalogs and on websites, but witnessing one in real life was another thing completely. This was a well constrained little day trip after all was settled.

When I got home, I craned the mill out of Vantruck’s bed onto my handcart, then set the crane up again inside the minishop to pluck it back off the handcart and onto the bench. I marked the holes in the base onto the bench when I pushed the thing to where I thought I liked it. Then I craned it up out of the way just a bit so I could drill the holes, and made the final bolted attachment. I’m not using the stand it came with, but I might turn it into something later on like a grinding/sanding station with wheels that lives in the hangar.

Well… now I have a mill on a bench. The big problem is, I had to kick much of my collection of mill tooling and other as-of-then unconstrained tooling and cutters off that bench onto the lathe bench. I now was forced to finally do something about organizing all that!

I made another Pegwall using called-up reserve materials, purchased from the first time around last year. This one is just a half size, 44 inches wide, to fill the space up to the “bedroom closet” which is still kind of an unallocated space (The floor drill press migrated into the hangar as part of this effort).

The Huot dispenser drawers I bought long ago were emptied out and repurposed. I resold as packs/sets basically all of the taps and endmills in them, as the majority were sizes I already owned in some way. I kept only a handful of duplicates and ones I didn’t own yet (like thread-forming taps).

Basically I just relabeled by hand the drawers I needed based on the sizes of tooling I owned. I am not a job shop, I don’t need 3 different drawers each of Plug/Taper/Bottoming type taps, per size. Just the sizes I need to use with some spare empty spots for future expansion.

Somehow I had collected enough 1/2″ reduced-shank (Silver & Deming) drills to make a full 33/64″ to 1″ set by 1/64″ increments… with a bunch to spare, and several larger than 1″ drills! I decided to make wood block organizers like I’ve seen a bunch of times. Some “nice” wood from Home Depot (I’m not even sure what wood it is, besides Nicer Than The Usual 2×2) and some marking and drilling later, and they were done.

The hanger brackets attached to them are for use with plastic organizer bins. I just screwed 2 of them onto each drill bit forest.

One can think of this as kind of the “drilling and tapping” wall. The tooling I had enough of to be annoying, but not enough of to make a comprehensive organized drawer in a tool chest, all got homes in little labeled plastic bins. Drills, taps, countersinks, counterbores, and miscellaneous hole-making implements like my stash of spot weld cutters, and so on all live here. There’s plenty of space on this pegwall for things to grow and evolve, even though it looks a bit barren right now.

The little pink drawer block contains Dremel accessories, because why be boring and buy just the black drawers!?

Of course, with a labeling and organizing spree comes the way I prefer to label and organize things.

I decided to get a new set of “the basics” for the mill just to make sure I have everything I needed besides cutters. Like, I’ve had an odd edge finder here and there, and lost my DTI many moons ago (it’s probably still in a tote or basket somewhere, and I’ll find it immediately after sorting stuff).

This was a fun chance to see if anyone else has invented machine shop goodies too. I found this R8 collet rack that would fit all the metric and inch ones I had accrued. There were more “creative” designs for racks and holders as well, but I’m more a simplicity guy. Some times, people going ham making 3D printed organizers and shadowboxes for everything feels more like making a set for a Youtube channel – which, quite honestly, many of those are.

A long time ago, I designed up a small tray to hold something (it was in the Robot Trap House CAD folder) and so I just changed some dimensions and pattern multiples to turn it into general purpose endmill and cutter holders.

Thoughts about making up a Gridfinity system or something did cross my mind, but again… making it useful for me first. I wasn’t in the mood to plan out that far.

As long as it fills up my toolbox drawers and I can scribble on it. There’s an additional tray set, miniaturized, on the top deck to hold things like the edge finders. Rapid access up top, more esoteric as we move lower. The next drawer under this one currently just has a R8 drill chuck and fly cutter/face mill in it, but it’ll probably be where the R8 tooling will live.

So now the only thing the mill is missing is digital scales, which I’ll attend to at some point. For now, driving it by eyesight and Sharpie scratch marks is sufficient. At least I can readily shave parts down, make keyways and motor shaft flats, and more complex bolt patterns again, and now with a quill and Z feed too!

Funny enough, the very first job I needed the mill for didn’t strictly require a mill but the rigid, dial-able setup made things much easier. I wonder what it is…