A little background first
I started out of high school working as a machinist. For
almost 10 years, I had a complete machine shop at my disposal for
any projects I had.
I started putting together my shop after I left working in machine shops. I
enjoyed working with anything mechanical but not having access to
machines like lathes or mills, made it difficult to repair or make things that I was
able to do very simply when I worked in a shop. I started by
buying an "all-in-one" machine by Shop Task. It
filled a hole for a bit but it quickly became more work to setup or
change from mill to lathe than it was worth. I soon found a
Southbend 10" lathe which made life easier. I could leave the
Shop Task as a mill. After a bit I 'upgraded' the mill to a
Grizzly knee mill. Life was good. I had a real lathe
and a real mill. The WWII Southbend did good but had
limitations for what I wanted to start doing. The flat belt
slipped, no reverse, etc. After a couple years, I added a
Grizzly lathe.