Hobbymat MD65 with milling attachment.

[bridgeman1962Participant @bridgeman1962]

I am looking to by my first lathe and have seen a brand new Hobbymat Md65 with milling attachment, neither have been unpacked and still in its grease coating. The owner is looking for an offer. I cant find any of these advertised to get a guide price. Has anybody got any idea what it might be worth. Many thanks.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

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

A very nice catch if you can get it.

MichaelG.

[modeng2000Participant @modeng2000]

Go for it, I used to have the lathe and a separate mill that used the same head and wish I still had them.

John

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

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.

[Dave WoottonParticipant @davewootton]

One sold a month or two ago within our club from the estate of a deceased member, it had been very little used and still boxed, with the vertical attachment, 3 and 4 jaw chucks, drill chuck and a Modeloy milling chuck and other tooling. I’m not aware of the actual selling price but the advertised price was offers around £450. Looked like a useful little machine. Another member, sadly long gone, used one to build a number of 2 1/2″ gauge engines and an Allchin traction engine to a very good standard, so obviously a machine capable of useful work. It seemed a reasonable price to me, but I have to admit to not being very well up on machine pricing and don’t remember seeing many for sale, but do recall them being on sale new in the mid 80’s

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

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.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

The thing about the Hobbymat then was that it was the only self contained small machine with motor built in and a chuck before mini-lathes came on the scene. The flexispeed and unimat were smaller and without ebay the thousands of old small lathes were stuck in sheds. About then the ML10 was £600 without motor or chuck. It didn’t have much competition.

[Dave WoottonParticipant @davewootton]

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.

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

I guess today’s nearest new machine equivalent would be the Sealey SM2503 at around £1,400. Which looks to be not quite as nice as the Hobbymat.

Applying the usual 2/3 rds new price estimate for really nice but not fresh from the factory/dealer estimate suggests something in the £900 to £1,000 could be realistic if the buyer really wants a Hobbymat.

The problem is that the common mini lathe which is more prevalent in the general used market is a both a (useful) small amount larger in capacity tends to depress prices. Fundamentally at this end of the market folk are largely driven by getting the most machine compatible with the depth or more likely shallowness of their pockets rather than by brand.

So Daves reported £700 odd or a bit more is probably in the right ballpark.

Clive

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

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.

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