Hopefully Graham Meek will see this, and might have a better idea than most.

A very nice catch if you can get it.

MichaelG.

Unless you are very limited on space, ie working in a corner of the living room, the milling head on the lathe is very restricted in size of workpiece. May be enough for clockmaking or up to 16mm locos, boat engines and the like.
As you are a complete beginner you might consider a small mini-lathe, old Drummond, or RandA provided they are complete and working, despite age and wear. Then when you have learned what is what trade up for something that meets you long term objectives.

Hi, in July 1992, an avert for a brand new Hobbymat lathe was £535.00 exclusive of VAT, and the BFE motorised mill/drill attachment was £450.00 exclusive of VAT. These were quite popular at the time, but not so much now. I would expect they are worth at least £500.00, but could make a bit more to a collector.

At about this time I bought the KT Co-ordinate table @ £385.00 exclusive of VAT, with the intention of getting the mill/drill attachment at a later date when funds would allow, but by the time I had the funds, Chester were selling a complete milling machine for not a lot more, and so I bought one of them, and sold the BFE Co-ordinate table on for around £300.00 still in it’s box and unused with all the protective coating still on, which was a bit of a bargain for the buyer, as they had gone up in price by quite a bit by then.

Regards Nick.

I have had an error pointed out in my post above, a fellow club member drew my attention to the original advert which I either failed to read properly or have forgotten, either highly likely. The Lathe was advertised at £450 with standard equipment plus a 4 jaw chuck, but the milling head which was unused was advertised for £250 to include a small machine vice and a collet chuck, there was also a boxed unused Essel engineering slow speed attachment separately at £50. The whole lot was sold to a member for £700, evidently he is delighted with his purchase.

Apologies for any confusion caused by my memory failure, hope this gives some guide as to what one sold for recently.

I think in general I tend to agree with Bazyle feelings regarding the small size and light-duty nature of work that the set-up used as a combination machine is capable of – the MD65 is an excellent small lathe, but the ‘cantilevered bed’ design seriously compromises it’s performance as a milling platform for all but the lightest tasks.

The later milling heads used helical gears of acetal with pressed-in bronze bushes – a design mistake, IMO – that are prone to coming adrift; these machines also have a 1MT spindle taper which is very telling of the maker’s expectations – virtually all similarly-sized machines (and even some smaller) commonly use 2Morse.

Think carefully about the size and the nature of work you might ever intend undertaking.