Slab Flattening Mill

Easy to make a mill that works well for a few bucks. But it wouldn't be as pretty. I'm keeping my thousand bucks tucked in my wife's purse.

DesertRatTom said:

Easy to make a mill that works well for a few bucks. But it wouldn't be as pretty. I'm keeping my thousand bucks tucked in my wife's purse.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I say make your own, can then customize it as you desire. Spend $20 on acrylic paints and you can make it pretty too.

Hard to believe they are asking that much, for such a simple tool. I think I've got around $1200 invested in my shop, including the shop itself. I've been given a number of tools, including a nice planner, made all my shop stands, and various tools. Keeps the cost down.

I made one once much larger than that to flatten the top of my nearly 8' long workbench (laminated together from 2x boards). Cost me a couple of dollars worth of ply. I stood a sheet of 3/4 mdf up on either side of the bench and cross braced them to stand up and be rigid and made the sled to ride on top of the edges. Not nearly as pretty but just as effective.

Looks like a job for "Super CNC Man" !! - lol

DesertRatTom said:

Easy to make a mill that works well for a few bucks. But it wouldn't be as pretty. I'm keeping my thousand bucks tucked in my wife's purse.

Click to expand...

You're lucky. My wife's keeping her $1,000 in her purse. Really, unless you do a lot of these and make a living at these this it's almost impossible to justify that expense when there are so many ways to do the same thing inexpensively. You're better putting that money into a tool that will get a good deal more use like a Domino. YMMV (your mileage may very)

! ....16' ? Man, that's a lot of floor space to dedicate to a single purpose tool.
Hopefully it could be knocked down to just a worktop between uses?
Other than my obvious space jealousy, excellent job, Ron!

I saw that Woodpecker add the other day. I’ll use Harry’s version anytime.

Thanks Dan. My friend has large farm buildings. Since 2013 he has been running a thriving factory, building cupboards. He is now on his 4th Makita, and the table is used daily.

A little while ago they did a copy of the Stanley #1 Odd Job, with improvements. I could see only 1 functional improvement, the way the pencil was held when drawing an arc.

I bought an Odd Job from Carbatec a couple of years ago $A40, the same size woodpeckers version was nearly 5 times the price $A190! The larger woodpeckers version was $A275.

One other 'improvement' they claimed was that it was machined out of 'aircraft grade' aluminium, I actually prefer the old world aesthetic of my cast & machined brass one.

Oh and the pencil holder, well I have some brass rod in my scrap bin and a metal lathe if I ever feel the need to upgrade mine.