In article ,
Gil HASH wrote:
How easy is it to own metalworking equipment in France? It
*might* be that the lack of a similar newsgroup or mailing list reflects
the difficulty of becoming a metalworking hobbyist in France. (I have
read of similar difficulties in Germany.)
Then again, I see from your .sig block that you are not *in*
France, so you might not know the answer to this question.)
Hello Don
I'm living in a french oversea country beetween madagascar and Mauritius
island
And, according to my wife, it is a volcanic island. Hopefully
it will remain inactive while you are there.
In france there is no problem to get a metalworking equipement
but in reunion island : it's quite impossible
with 12000 kilometers (in a strait line) from France everything turn to be
difficult
By plane the shipping price is more than expensive for equipements witch
weight is over 250 Kg
I can imagine that. Have you looked into the costs of shipping
by sea? That might be more affordable, if significantly slower.
There is no local reseller from any of the well known factories
I am an hobbyist, what in french, we call a "bricoleur"
My wife found that word unfamiliar, so she went to a dictionary
which she keeps handy, and that suggested "handyman" as the English
translation. A subtle difference, but it suggests that you will need
the ability to use these tools sooner rather than later.
doing some little
thing but wanting to do some things more difficult
I can understand that. It is very frustrating to not be able
to do something because of a lack of the proper tools.
My first idea was to buy a micro lathe and a mini drill, but damned, I was
astonished by the prices
A mini drill and a mini lathe are more expensive than a medium manual drill
and lathe with their standart accessories
That could be because fewer of them are sold -- especially in
the markets in which you are looking.
Have you compared the prices at the various US sellers? (Ones
like Harbor Freight maintain web sales sites which should allow you to
check their prices, at least.)
However, for shipping, perhaps Australia would be your best bet.
They tend to have a lot of the same Chinese and Taiwanese machines which
are sold by US vendors like Harbor Freight, and the shipping cost to you
would probably be less. I don't know what the exchange rate would be
like.
My wife suggested South Africa, but we have had posters here who
have had problems getting machine tools -- other than used ones imported
from the UK some years before.
I don't know whether you care whether the tools are calibrated
in Imperial units (inches and thousandths), or metric units (mm and
hundredths). That might determine where you buy, because the Australian
ones would be more likely to be Metric, while most in the US are
Imperial.
My next idea was to try buy one drill and one lathe from France, my third
idea was to buy them directly from Singapour or one other eastern country
In any case I stopped my dream with the amount of shipping and to find a
trading agent
The next idea was to buy a drill and use it like a mill
The previous posts upon the subject were precious for understanding that I
was in wrong
(I loosed my chuck falling down every minute but I was thinking than the
chuck was bad)
You are lucky that the chuck did not chase you around the room
with a sharp cutter mounted. Others have had that experience.
What a curse to be in a charming island with a lot of sun but far from
anywhere ,-)
I would be very frustrated. Or -- I probably would re-focus my
interests onto more affordable hobbies. Photography -- especially
digital photography with today's digital SLR cameras, involves fewer
expensive purchases overall, (though the first few are killers), and the
weight is minimal.
Of course, you *could* try the series of books by Gingery
dealing with building your own machine shop from scratch. They start
with teaching you to melt and cast scrap aluminum, and to use that to
build machine tools, starting with a lathe. It would be some time
before you had a lathe or a milling machine (they also teach how to
build a shaper), but he shipping costs would be minimal. Paper weighs a
lot less than sufficient cast iron to make the tools which you need.
Is there a classified ads section in your local newspaper? Is
there a possibility that someone else may already have such tools and be
looking to sell them (perhaps after moving up to a larger version)?
Given the shipping costs, perhaps a 3-in-1 tool (lathe, drill
press, and mill) would be a better choice for you, in spite of the known
problems with such machines. At least, you would be paying only once.
(Though most who have started with a 3-in-1 machine have moved on to
separate machines after a while.
Best of luck,
DoN.
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