开云体育

I took a machine shop class in high school, finished the class and graduated from high school right around 50 years ago. A bit over 15 years ago, I bought my first lathe. One of the Chinese Mini-lathes, a Harbor Freight 7x10, model 93212. That was around August 2008, IIRC. From then until December of 2014 I had the devil's own time trying to get that lathe to do what I wanted it to do. Got a lot of great help from this and other boards over at Yahoo groups, before they crashed and burned. Still wasn't doing all that good with my life. My wife got tired of my griping about it, and told me to take another class! So I did. Started in February 2015, and I finally completed it in May of 2022. That's 7 years and 3 month, to the day. It was supposed to be an 8 or 9 month class if you attended full time. And I started full time, but was also working full time, and I'm not a teenager anymore. ;)

I think I made it through the first couple of months, but after that, it was two nights a week, 3 hours per night. One of the things I learned in that class was that I had completely forgotten (assuming I had ever learned) how to measure parts accurately. The class taught me that, and a bit of practice with their equipment, including a set of Johannsen blocks to practice on, fixed that in a couple of days. I searched messages for your first questions here. And that was not a whole lot over a year ago. It took me 7 years to figure out I was failing abjectly, and 7 more to do a lot better. I should be a better machinist than you are. But I would be willing to make a small wager that if I am, it won't be for long! You've made tremendous progress in just over a year! I'd have to be blind and stupid to not recognize that! I will admit to being crazy, but I try not to be stupid! ;)

Oh, and there wasn't a single thing wrong with my first lathe that a bit of skill wouldn't have been able to overcome. All the problems were the "Stick Actuator" as we Air Force folks call it. :)

Bill in OKC