Milling: A Complete Course (Workshop Practice)

I know various reviewers have criticised this book as I read the reviews before ordering and did wonder what I would be getting. I find it to be a very useful book and is refreshing the parts of my memory that are very dim now in the past. It is making me take a very good look at what additional tooling I am going to be ordering for my new mill and what I feel I am tempted to make. Harold Hall's writing style might not be to everybody's taste, but it is a book to be read a number of times. He packs a lot of good information in it. He also has an excellent website with plenty more projects for mill and lathe and you will find more photos of considerable better quality, that can be zoomed as well. For those that have a difficulty understanding the two different milling directions there is some very clear help on YouTube, (Tom's techniques comes to mind and Tubal Cain, Mr Pete has loads of info on milling). I find this book along with other in the series give me a lot of help, which is then supplemented by YouTube. A point that should be noted is that Mr Hall clearly aims his books at those of us who don't have vast machine tool budgets and his own machine is in fact not so sophisticated as many now buy from the modestly priced Chinese imports for the model engineer. Much as many of us would love a Bridgeport like many US home workshop owners have on YouTube, it is just not possible for most of us. At this stage I must say that I have not yet started any of the projects as I am waiting for my mill to be delivered, but I am certainly going to be doing some to build up my tooling.

Useful book

A very useful guide for the beginner but moves very quickly from basic principles & simple accessories to the machining & assembly of quite complicated tools. Clear explanations are given with good quality photos to illustrate various techniques & correct mounting of workpieces. By the end of the course I would hope to have a sound grasp of milling. If not, it will be down to me not the book.

Looked on Harold Halls website & the projects looked interesting, so I bought the book. Not made any of them yet, but some will be done when I have time! I shall have to convert the metric measurements to imperial, as I have imperial machines. Just call 1mm as .040", most of the metric screw threads can use BA equivalents if you don't have the metric taps & dies to hand.

After years of not using a milling machine I needed a book to refresh my memory great book for the novice and skilled alike

This book doesn't have much about the techniques involved in using a mill. I think it would have been better for me to have had something more at the outset about how to mark out etc. It does have some introductory material on cutters etc but the author's idea is that you will learn from a series of projects, several of which seem a little daunting for the absolute beginner. If you can make the items he describes, you will have made some nice tools for use in your workshop. On the other hand, if you can't you may feel a little cheated....

it was all ok

Although this is my third book on milling and the second by Harold Hall there are many new articles which make the small library I have collected a thorough guide to milling. Each book including this one has practical projects to make items and tooling to complement the use of the machine you are learning about. Well worth the small investment required.