I was wondering if anyone here has a smithy machine and if you do what do you think of it and what model do you have.thanks in advance

Forgive my ignorance, but what is a smithy machine? Is it a robot gunsmith that does everything exactly as you ask and in a very short order with exceptional results?

Save your money and buy seperate machines, even if they are used ,good condition machines.
I bought a Jet mill and South Bend lathe with tooling for 1700.00.
Just so happens my good friend and gunsmith was looking to buy new machines, and made me a offer I couldnt refuse .He ended up with the grizzly lathe and mill.

Look at the machinist boards. You will find plenty of conversation about these machines.

http://www.chaski.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php

And the old board:

http://www.chaski.com/cgi-bin/machine_archive/webbbs_config.pl?index

some one posted,to buy the machinery separate,I would be interested in doing so,just thought I might save some shop space.also someome told me that you can buy used machinery from the goverment,military surplus does anyone know of this.the guy said the stuff was real cheap and in very good condition,but I cant locate him for more info.thanks in advance

The problem with the smith's and their ilk is they don't have enough rigidity to do good work. The other problem is the mill portion has an extremely small working area.

That and the majority of the time a home smith spends isn't cutting, but setting up to cut. With an all and one machine, you'll be doubling your set up time converting from lathe to mill and back.

The general consensus on the minimum setup for a home shop is an R-8 mill drill and a 12X36 or 13X40 lathe. If you can spring for a knee mill, you'll be better off still from the mill/drill due to the lake of a Z axis.

I've been tempted by a smithy or clone many a time, but am still waiting to get a 13X40, and later a mill.

I couldnt tell a good machine from a bad one,I do have very basic machining skills,I used to drag race harleys and built my fair share of motors and trannys and machined many parts like pullys and stuff,bored cylinders and custom parts,but never did anything with guns until a few years ago and dont really want the machine to make barrels or anything like that just yet,my problem is I had access to a complete shop, a good friend of mine but he recently passed on unexpectedly and I need to do valve jobs bore cylinders and basic machine work,I work on bikes nites to support my gun,hunting,fishing,archery atv & camping habits.but I wouldnt mind doing some gunsmithing some day.

When I was choosing my machine-tool-play-thing, I was choosing between Smithy and Shoptask, had to be 3-in-1, and I chose Shoptask because it's cheaper and comes with lots of freebies. Well, either machine is slow enough for threading barrels, so they got the same problem. Had not much chance to use my machine, but will use it a lot in the near future.

I have tested the machine, I made a Tokarev pistol firing pin, from a segment of cleaning rod that came with my AR-15, the pin broke after about 120 rounds. The machine has no fault considering the material is bad and I dry fire it couple hundred times.

I never seen a shoptask machine,do they have a web page? as far as tooling and cutters and stuff my grandfather was a tool& die maker and I have all of his tools,boxes of end mills reamers you name and I probably have it.but I need to get a machine fast,Im loosing to much money paying for my local machine shop to do what I need done,I can do it myself if I had my own machines or machine to do it on.so my hunt is still on,I went to harbor frieght,they had mosty junk there and most of the machinery was refurbished and some were even missing parts and a high pressure sales man that new nothing about what he was talking about and that turns me off so my hunt is on

I have the Smithy CB1239XL. I really don't like and wish I would have bought something better. The combo machine aspect doesn't bother me, but holding tolerances is a pain. If you get the XL it comes with a larger mill table. It is very usefull though. I've built many Bronco Parts, a 30-378, a couple of bullet molds, some custom brass for a 16 bore pinfire and now a 4 bore flare gun. I'm about to start on a baby falling block in 22 Hornet for my son's first gun. I'm sure the Smithy will get the job done, but it'll require lots of hand fitting to get the right tolerances.

I've heard good things about the Grizzly line. I think there in Seattle???

snowmaker,

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as far as tooling and cutters and stuff my grandfather was a tool& die maker and I have all of his tools,boxes of end mills reamers you name and I probably have it

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I am so jealous I find it hard to help you.
Hmph! Here's the page, WWW.Shoptask.com , they also have a user forum linked to their site, find it yourself

The 3-in-1s are not built for precision, so neither shoptask or smithy will do ultra precision stuff. My shoptask is a "gunmaster" which you'll have to look in the specials section. I had to tinker with the machine to make it work optimally---I need an extension for the mill to reach the table, I had to shim the tool bits for them to cut through center, etc. Understand their shortcomings and these machines can serve one very well.

I went to the site to test the link, it works fine but I can't find the gunmaster machines anymore, maybe you can ask them if you are interested in the gunmaster, the gunmaster has 32" center to center lathe bed instead of the 22" on the Eldorado.