Have you watched any machining videos from Keith Fenner (Turn Wright Machine Works)?  His background is from the Naval yard shops.  I find it easy to spend the time watching him do his projects.
https://www.youtube.com/c/KeithFenner/videos

Not what I thought the thread was going to be about.  lol

Pretty creative. 

UPDATE on my project to separate my mill/lathe combo into a stand alone mill and stand alone lathe:I had a setback because I realized the Grizzly cross slide table did not have LH lead screws and when the cross slide hand wheel was turned it would move the cross slide in the opposite direction of any normal lathe or mill. I found another cross slide table on eBay and ordered it. I also ordered parts to swap out the lead screw on the grizzly unit. Both units have + and -
The eBay unit was about $60 less expensive and the fit and finish on it is not as good as the grizzly unit. Also the dials on the eBay unit are fixed so they cannot be zeroed where the grizzly ones can be zeroed. Not an issue as I will be using a DRO. The eBay unit has longer gibs and more gib adjustment screws. It also has gib locking screws to fix the carrage. The grizzly unit only had gib adjustment. The eBay unit is 55lbs, which is 10lbs heavier than the Grizzly. The Grizzly table is slightly longer and 1" taller but the eBay unit is a little deeper. The lead screws on the eBay unit are bigger than the grizzly lead screws but the over all travel in each direction is less on the eBay unit. Most importantly when the hand wheels on the eBay unit are turned the table moves in the correct direction. Over all I think the eBay table will be the better one in the long run after I clean up the fit and finish and get it adjusted properly.Even though I had to switch gears I have still made a TON of progress on this project. The new cross slide table is going to work well. I will be using 1 2 3 block to do the height adjustment.

I will use shims between the top plate and cross slide to tram the unit. Using the 1 2 3 blocks for height adjustment will give me 4 different height adjustments from 0"-3" and then the 3" from the quill. With the Grizzly cross slide I had designed an adjustable height setup that used threaded rods but I don't have the room for it with this slide. I will be filling the column with lead. I discovered that my lathe was more prone to vibration especially in high pressure procedures like parting after I removed the mill head so that showed me the important of extra weight on these tools. I will do something similar for the lathe to add extra weight to it and minimize the vibrations.

The motor will be mounted directly to the mill head which should help balance the machine and keep the head swivel option.


I upgraded/downgraded the Grizzly table to a LH leadscrew. I say upgraded because it is now LH, but I say downgraded because it went from a 5/8" rod to 1/2" rod. The only way I could affordably get a 10 TPI ACME LH threaded rod and a nut was to drop do 1/2" all the affordable 5/8" rod was 8 TPI which would have thrown off my dials. I did find one place that had LH 5/8-10 but I would have had $80 + into the rod and nut, and would have needed to do a bunch of machining to add the nut to the table. The 1/2" parts I purchase were $30 and the new nut fit inside the old nut simply by punching it out to .75”. I am not worried about it being 1/2" because I am just going to use this table on my drill press and not use it for milling so it will not see the same kinds of forces it would if it was on a mill. Also the screw necks down to .385 to go into the hand wheels so that is the weakest part of the screw. I am way happier with the second cross slide table I purchased and I’m actually glad the grizzly unit didn’t work out because my final mill build will be way more rigid with the second slide.

 I also did some machining on a timing pulley to fit on the snout of my lathe to drive the encoder for my electronic leadscrew. I used a boring bar to open it up from 25mm to 48mm This electronic leadscrew will alow me to cut threads by powerfeeding the leadscrew with a servo.