The Benchmaster is a small Bridgeport-styled vertical mill. Unlike most bench top mills, the Benchmaster uses a knee for the Z-axis, rather than a moving headstock. Although this makes for a relatively stiff machine, it also makes the mill heavy, and limits the total headroom. It was sold in both vertical and horizontal models – I have the vertical model, but would be very interested in acquiring the parts to convert to a horizontal. For more information on the Benchmaster, check out the Benchmaster page at the excellent lathes.co.uk site.

So far, I’ve replaced the drive motor and belt, trammed in the machine, and installed an ER-25 collet set. I’ve also picked up an original Benchmaster rotary table – a good find, since most currently produced rotary tables are significantly taller, and eat away at the machine’s already-limited headroom. In the future, I want to completely restore the machine, add DROs and a back gearing system, and ideally convert it to dual-use manual/CNC like this guy did – it’s going to definitely take a little while before I can get there, though.