Well a 5 year apprenticeship is around 8,000 hours after which “right to drawing – fast” is expected and normal. Model Engineering needs most of the skills taught to an apprentice but you don’t need the speed and “close to drawing then adjust to fit” will usually do. Although its surprising how soon some speed and decent accuracy comes with regular tasks.

So its fair to expect it to take a while before you are happy with your skills and work rate.

Biggest handicaps for the home shop lone hand are:-

1) having no one to show you “right now” when you can’t get a decent handle on a job or process so “educate yourself” means taking a few wrong turnings and often settling in the “hafta do” cul de sac making hard work of what is a simple job if you only knew the right way.

2) having to learn how to set up your lathe and other machine tools as you go so its hard to tell if problems are due to your undeveloped machining skills or set-up inadequacies. Hardest thing is to get a handle on how much cut is right. Far too many people resort to baby cuts to get round set-up or wear problems.

Ages back I had a Pools Special lathe with which I could “eventually” get decent results. Guy I sold it to bought an expert adviser with him who looked the lathe over, pronounced the my rebuild and adjustments good then asked if he could take a test cut off the rather nibbled bit of steel residing in the chuck. I agreed but said the material seemed too tough for the lathe. After trying a very short cut with my tool he said it needed a touch up. About three seconds on the grinder made no difference that I could see but on replacing the tool he promptly took a 1/8 inch ish cut leaving an excellent finish! I’d always figured that 20 thou cut was going well in steel! I got the asking price though, which did soothe the ego somewhat.

Clive.