Check out the "gingery" books. You'll end up with metal casting equipment, a
good sized lathe, mill, shaper etc, no free time .. and a divorce :P
You can build a lathe with a mill or a mill with a lathe actually. Most
people start with lathes. I started with a mill.

You can get a minimill for about 500. A minilathe for about 400. You can get
micro versions of either for about half (the lathes dont actually get much
cheaper).
You can get a used industrial mill lathe MAssively cheap on ebay. Ive seen
full sized manual mills go for under $500. Of course you need to add $1000
shipping, have three phase power, a LARGE amount of space and a LOT of money
for tools and reconditioning. You can get a minilathe, minimill, and all the
stuff to get you equipped pretty good for about $1000 total (including
tools). Whatever you spend on the lathe or mill you will spend that again
on tooling for them (vises, endmills, calipers, etc etc).

Grizzly mills are immensely popular for hobbyist/home shop types like me. As
are the harbor freight mills and lathes. For smaller ones look at
sherline/taig (i emphasize smaller work). Id really reccomend one of the
harbor freight or grizzly mills. With a full sized mill you really need to
get high quality endmills etc, and they literally cost 20 times more.

Just my opinion


"Bullfrog" wrote in message
...
Say guys, I'm tired of hand tools and want to get a real machine tool
besides my drill press. Strictly hobby and shop. Which would you buy
first,
a lath or a mill?

Thanks for any input.