How useful is a small milling machine for wood ship building from a kit.

Depends on your perspective. That is a nice tool and is indeed and good shop addition for ship modeling. However, I would not say that it is needed nor would it improve your ship building from "kits". For "scratchbuilding" definitely, but for kits all the milling and cutting is mostly done for you. I have never found much need to use my machine tools for kit building. Just my 2 cents... Others may have a different perspective.
 
Hi Paul
I agree with Mike for building kits out of the box,you do not need a mill.
If you wish to bash them to the extreme,then something like the MF70 is a great machine.You will soon find yourself making alterations you would have possibly avoided or not considered without the mill.
Just as an example,ugly plywood gun carriages are an easy replacement in solid wood once you have read up on how to mass produce the parts on the mill.

Kind Regards

Nigel
 
Hi Paul
I agree with Mike for building kits out of the box,you do not need a mill.
If you wish to bash them to the extreme,then something like the MF70 is a great machine.You will soon find yourself making alterations you would have possibly avoided or not considered without the mill.
Just as an example,ugly plywood gun carriages are an easy replacement in solid wood once you have read up on how to mass produce the parts on the mill.

Kind Regards

Nigel
In total agreement with the above comments. If one is building a kit with no plans to alter or make upgrades I think this tool would look great on the bench but rarely if ever see any action. I’ve bought a few things over the years and now wonder what I was thinking.
John
 
I assume that you have a lathe already? (for turning mast and yards)
 
This Dremel router attachment might be good for light occasional work enhancing kit parts if you have a Dremel drill. Very cheap.
 
I like the sanding blocks, is that something you’ve made?
The red rubber block is from the hardware store, and the board is, well, just a board with sandpaper stapled to it. :) While the wood spins, you put equal pressure on it from both sides, using both sanding blocks at once. If you sand from one side, you'll soon break a yardarm or flagstaff.
 
If you really want to cheap out, I've used this little plastic router head:
With proper set up- make sure the work piece is wide enough for the whole head, make sure it and your guide are clamped down solidly, etc- it works OK with some limitations. I was able to mill out some channel stock from some walnut I was already going to cut down into stripwood so wood waste wasn't much of an issue. I was easier and turned out better than trying to do the same thing with multiple cuts on the little Proxxon bench saw, and quicker than trying to kludge something like a dado head for it.
 
All these comments are good...for me, the key question is what level of modeling are you going to do. If you stick to kits, even modest kit-bashing...these tools will not really be helpful and probably won't get the use for the money. If you want to get into scratch building...especially 1/4 scale...they will be a delight to use.
 
Love the Carriages - Nice !!!
 
All these comments are good...for me, the key question is what level of modeling are you going to do. If you stick to kits, even modest kit-bashing...these tools will not really be helpful and probably won't get the use for the money. If you want to get into scratch building...especially 1/4 scale...they will be a delight to use.

I don't know, Daniel. I'm kit bashing Corel's La Couronne galleon, and I found the lathe to be a supreme time saver making yard arms and mast parts. Planing dowels into perfectly round and tapered parts didn't exactly seem to be an easy task. It depends on your experience using a modelling plane. My experience is in machining, so the lathe was a logical choice. It all depends on the technique you are most comfortable with getting from a chunk of wood to a finished part. Of course, if you make more than one model or have other projects that require more expensive machine tools, the utility of them makes it worth while. I guess that depends on where you need or want to spend your money within your budget.
 
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