Customer Reviews

Milling: A Complete Course (Workshop Practice)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The title of the book is a misnomer, since this is far from a complete course on milling. It is, however, a good book for a starter for somebody who's bought a small home mill and has discovered that it's missing even the most basic tools and has no real instructions with it. I've been a machinist since the mid-1980's and have plenty of practice and tools, and there were even a few items among the projects that I intend to build. Given the price, if you've just bought a small mill and haven't the foggiest idea what to do with it, this book is money well spent. I gave it only four stars, however, mainly because it's not what it claims to be when it says it's a "complete" course. Instead, it's an excellent place to start.

Very good for learning new techniques. Covers setup and operation of most home shop mills. I am building the advanced tool sharpener holder which is one of the projects presented. It was an unexpected challenge to convert the dimensions from mm to inches, but a good exercise.

I also learned several milling techniques that I was unaware of. A great book for the price. The "Lath a complete course" is a good companion book and both books compliment each other.

I have bought three of Harold Hall's books, and they have all been read, used and re-read.

His writing is clear, expert, well illustrated with clear photographs and drawings and the projects are very suitable to anyone starting in this fascinating field of metal working. They are good bed side reading and/or workshop guides for the actual projects.
The books in the Workshop Practice Series are compact, about 128 pages, but contain a surprisingly large amount of information, and are good value.
The projects in "Milling" are graded from easy to intermediate difficulty, and each tool made can be used in later projects. Each project introduces new milling techniques and information, and in the course of the entire book most major milling procedures which might be used by the hobbyist are covered. The subtitle "A complete course" is appropriate.

The tools look really interesting and useful, and I plan to make most of them.

I strongly recommend this book, and also "Lathework- A Complete Course" and "Tool and Cutter Sharpening" by the same author.

A lot packaged in a small space. The book is interesting in that it starts out with a project How to make t nuts (can't have to many) then an angle plate. Each project you make you can use to make the next project. T nuts hold angle plate, angle plate holds the parts to make boring head, boring head is used to make the dividing head. pretty good pictures, very good diagrams a lot of great tips. For a small paper back it's priced about right I feel. I gave it four stars because I would have like to have a few more pages.

This book is full of hints and tips, as the previus review mentioned, it take's the reader to the milling machine and make parts and (if you don't have them already) use those parts for later project's in the book.
If you are not an expert, but want to have a go on a Mill Buy this book.
br. Arnoud.

A complete course it isn't. But if you can get beyond the pompous, finger-wagging prose style ("do, though, do the following"), there are some useful things buried in there - basic reminders, not much more. My real beef is that it seems to written exclusively for a non-US audience, maybe Anglo-centric. For one thing, he talks about milling cutters having threaded shanks, not mentioning that most of the little mills you can buy today use collets such as R8 or MT3. And then he observes that a vise isn't essential (he calls it a vice), saying that its disadvantages "far outnumber" its advantages. Huh? I don't know of any machinist, home or otherwise, who doesn't routinely use a vise. Because to do as he suggests with assorted angle plates, clamps, etc., is for most folk too tedious and time-consuming (want to buy a mill, anyone?). But then, later in the book, he describes how to convert a drilling machine vise to a milling vise - a dubious exercise at best. There's nothing here about mill basics, such as choosing one, edge finding, indicating, cutting fluids, drilling/reaming/tapping.

I bought this book to learn how to run a mill I had just purchased. The first chapter explains what a mill cutter and a vice are. The second explains how to make T-nuts that I had already purchased. Chapter 3 instructs the reader to go to your lathe, which I don't have, and make a tool necessary to go any further in the book. So, if you don't have a lathe, or any intention to buy one, this book is a waste of money. It's also written in "english" english rather than "american" english and every dimension is in millimeters rather than inches. If you also have a lathe and this book's companion, "Lathework - a complete course", by the same aurthor, the pair might prove useful.

Excellent book. I'm most impressed by the projects, which allow the reader to gain basic skills, then use them to build a series of useful and increasingly complex tools.

If you're looking for a couple of semi0-interesting projects to complete on the milling machine then you may find something of interest in this book. However, if you want instruction on actually how to use a milling maching properly then you should look elsewhere.

I find the style of writing to be difficult to follow in places - not sure if thats due to the writer being an Englishman and my being an American or what but I found the writing to be quite annoying.

I would definitely not purchase this book if I knew then what I know now.

This book is subtitled "A Complete Course", which lead me to believe that it was an instruction manual geared towards beginners, but the book has you making parts in the second chapter. The content is weak and all the dimensions are metric, which wouldn't be a big deal if you don't mind doing the conversion to standard dimensions. I wouldn't really recommend this book. There are others out there that do a better job of instruction and aren't as difficult to follow.