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Blimey! I know my dad really wanted one but couldn't afford it. He knew a few model engineers locally, so I bet he was aware of yours!

Not so important on a lathe, which is a single-point cutting machine. In any case it's cheap and easy to retrofit one. I wouldn't let this criterion constrain your choice.

Agreed - sorry if I gave that impression. Maybe I was unlucky, but every 140 or Bantam I tried needed a bed/cross slide regrind, so a lot of those machines must have had a lot of use. My dad was also a machine shop man, working as toolmaker at Cincinnati and Smart & Brown on some huge machines...

On lathes dot co dot uk, there's a useful section on buying a used lathe that saved me from buying a real dog. I hunted for a used Bantam or 140 for over a year, but every one I tried was worn out. Lockdown had just started and prices went stratospheric. There's no doubt that the larger...

Another common problem on condensing boilers is the reservoir that holds all the crud that hasn't been allowed through the filter. If this reservoir isn't cleaned regularly and gets full of crud, this causes the boiler's pressure relief valve to operate, thus reducing the system pressure. Worth...

There's a YouTube video of a guy comparing the Festool with a DeWalt. The deal-breaker for him was the handle orientation on the Festool - he couldn't get on with it at all, especially when making left-handed cuts. It may be worth thinking about whether that would be an issue for you.

Yes I do. But I can envisage a scenario where a small tool with extender causes damage. I think that during normal operation, the load is pretty much constant - the ideal scenario for machine tools. But lets say for example you're using a cheap ebay knockoff extender that isn't entirely...

I stand corrected. The 500 has max 28mm depth, not 25mm as I originally stated. Still a big jump to 70mm though.

As I said, 'among other things'. Festool have also mentioned different optimisations of the size/mass of cutters and how they affect the gearbox. Also, if you're using an extender, the runout at the tip of the cutter is likely to be greater than without the extender. If the extra runout is...

I share your frustration with this, but it's not about the coin. The 700 can dig 14mm dowels up to 70mm into the wood (compared with max. 10mm dowels, 25mm deep). That needs a lot of power and rigidity, hence extra size and weight. Now you can buy a third party adaptor for the 700 that allows it...

I also bought a 700 recently to aid in restoring a big old, but very dilapidated house. It's a joy to use and has saved so much time. I liked it so much I bought a 500 a month later, which is equally useful. @petermillard has pointed out in one of his videos that they can also effectively be a...

Don't put your dog in there if he's used to sleeping in the house. It's likely to cause him a great deal of stress and you'd have to do it for months to be effective. There's also the possibility the thieves could harm him. I'm sure you'd rather lose the tools than have anything happen to him.

I have a Meddings MB4 bench drill with a three phase motor and a VFD. This model has a back gear so I hardly ever need to change the pulley position. It doesn't have a rack & pinion table lift, but I get around this with a bottle jack under the table, with a small wooden adapter to align the...

I've been on a similar trajectory to the OP and had narrowed down my choice to the two dominoes. Most of my work is large stuff as I'm renovating a large old house. After a lot of soul-searching, I made the considerable outlay last week for a DF 700, despite a lot of posts preferring the 500...

+1 for Peter Millard. His workshop is a similar size to yours and is based around a track/plunge saw and domino jointer. He says he hardly ever uses his tablesaw or mitre saw, and though his main eqpt is high-end, he seems happy to use low end bandsaw and other tools. I recently bought a Mafell...