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.