Thanks for the advice on heat. I have a wood stove which I will put on early in the morning and the fire will be out before I start painting. I stack the paint a parts around the stove so they are warm. There will be no flame when I start to paint but it will be warm.

This is the folding open front spray booth.

Next up is scraping the faces and ways of the Centec. I’ll start with the column faces, which look to be in pretty good condition with minimal wear. Once I get the straight edge ‘blued up’ and give it a test, I should be able to see how flat things really are. The left side of the column way holds the dovetail of the knee, while on the right side, the gib slides against the column way.

I’ve made a simple cradle to hold the column at an angle so the left way stays flat while I scrape. The plan is to get the left way straight first, then use gauge pins to make sure the right side way is parallel and straight. After that, I’ll work on straightening the faces and left dovetail on the back of the knee, then finish by mating the knee back to the column. Should keep me busy for a while!

I’m new to machine rebuilding, so I’m saying all this out loud in case I’m missing something or doing it wrong. Any advice or thoughts are welcome!

Hey Dave, just wanted to say I’m not offended by your comments at all. I’m here to learn! I totally understand the difference between BSF, UNF, and Metric threads, both in angle and profile. This week, I learned about BA threads on this forum, which was new to me, and now that I understand it, I see BA threads everywhere on small components—pretty cool!

I’ve gone ahead and ordered a 2BA 2nd tap from Zoro to have on hand in case I need to clean up any threads, plus a bunch of 2BA cap head screws for replacement when needed. I’m aiming to work in thousandths of a millimeter, not tenths, so I’ve got my work cut out for me. I’ve got a solid granite surface plate, and Pete checked it with his repeat-o-meter, confirming it’s reference quality and in great shape (it sits on 3 basel points). Over time, I’ve also collected the metrology tools I need.

The cost of the machine was not the major concern because of space I needed a solid accurate desktop mill and to be honest I prefer older tools that are well built. I will put the Machine-DRO 3 axis with magnetic encoders on as they fit well on the mill and as I work in metric so the current movement control is not interesting to me.

I’ve spent a ton of time watching YouTube scraping videos—hundreds of hours from guys like Stephan Gotswinter, Keith Rucker, Vince Builds, Beachcomber Bob, and Robin Renzetti, SuburbanTool, Nick Mueller, Look Creations and Mach Super just to name a few. I also spent half a day with Pete learning how to scrape, and he was incredibly helpful and generous with his time. Pete even let me borrow a camelback straight edge for this task.

The only hiccup was the Sandvik Coromant carbide scraper was out of stock and I could not find one anywhere (unless I wanted to spend a fortune). Eventually, I tracked one down a on eBay, but while waiting for that, I decided to get the paint done. I know normally you wouldn’t paint before other stuff, but in this case I did. I was surprised at how long it took to clean the castings. I thought I’d get the paint done over two weekends, but it ended up taking 8 weekends. The paint job’s turned out pretty well, though! Better than new in my unbiased view.

I’ve built a solid steel-framed table (1400mm x 800mm, 220kg) with a rubber top to support the Centec. The frame is made from 75 x 75 x 5mm steel on FootMaster casters, so I can move it around but also level it when needed. Most things in my workshop are on casters (except the Boxford lathe), and since the mill sits in front of my folding spray booth, I need to be able to move it when spraying.

The table has 5 full-length drawers on each side for tooling and accessories, all on 50kg ball-bearing slides. In the center is an electrics cabinet housing a fan-cooled VFD with front panel controls. I’ve got on/e-stop, reverse/stop/forward (though direction not relevant for the Centec’s setup), variable speed, and RPM readout from a hall effect sensor on the spindle belt drive. The motor is a new 1.1kW (1.5hp) 240V 3-phase unit mounted directly under the mill and wired to the VFD.

I haven’t added jog controls yet but I’m considering it. I did the electrics and aluminium control panel myself, and I’d say they turned out top-class. I didn’t go into much detail before, but I used to be a staircase maker and got into CNC manufacturing 30 years ago when you had to handwrite G-code. Later, I moved into software engineering. So, I’ve done my fair share of control engineering and software-driven automation.