Doc,
Sorry I was tied up with income tax (and now sales tax) when this thread started and didn't log into the HM site for several days. If I had read your post at the beginning, I would have recommended you grab $1100 cash and beat feet over there and offer him $800 for starters (no point in not trying!).
The machine in the photo that you posted was a 3986. The 3996 is a cabinet model. Other than that, they are the same. Both are in the final model group built by Atlas. They were produced from sometime in 1967 to 06 MAR 1981.
If you decide to get a mill first, ignoring $100K NC work centers, there are two basic types, horizontal and vertical. Subject to size constraints, pretty much any operation that can be done on one can be done on the other. But most operations will be more efficiently done on one or the other. When it comes to things you can do on one but not the other, you can't cut a diagonal slot with an endmill (vertical ends to the slot) in a very long part on a horizontal because the part would have to stick down through the table. And hole drilling and tapping operations won't be as convenient on a horizontal. On the other hand, you can't put a horizontal head on any vertical mill I ever saw. You can't cut two or more parallel slots with a vertical. Etc.
If you decide to go with a small vertical mill, I would avoid any of the round column drill-mills where you change the quill to table distance by raising or lowering the head. Although you can do good work on them and a lot pf people have them, if you are part way into a job and suddenly discover that you need to change the table to quill distance, there is nothing to keep the quill from moving from side to side as you raise or lower the head. Atlas never built a vertical that I know of but Clausing built a couple of nice small bench mills that you could consider. They will run you a little more than the 3986 you were looking at but so will almost any other decent small vertical, even the better Chinese ones. Atlas made a small bench horizontal mill called the MF. Prices typically a little lower than the Clausing verticals. And three or four companies over the years built vertical heads for it. Clausing built a similar size horizontal and another small horizontal is the Benchmaster. I think that it could also be had with a vertical head. Of course many other people built relatively small verticals.
If your primary interest is in doing jobs to make money, first decide what sort of jobs you are going to do and then pick the machine or machines most suited and start looking. But don't buy a machine significantly larger than what you think you are going to need. It's generally easier to do small work on a small machine.
Gunner
