Bench Mill choices

Make sure you leave room for the full range of movement, table and head including room for your hands to operate the cranks.

These mills have a fairly significant rear overhang due to the motor. I put a low shelf behind mine for material storage to fill the otherwise wasted space. If you do put it in a corner you will want to leave room for movement in case you ever want to swing the head.

A lot of people like to put their mill in a corner.
 
Oldseabee said:
John, I live Ina Earthquake zone. We tie most things down, like book cases and equipment.
Click to expand...
I’m in Santa Cruz so know about earthquakes. Do whatever makes you feel secure.

Congratulations on getting it home, looks like a beauty:)
 
It's together. We rented an engine hoist towed behind our truck. Now the cleaning and oiling starts, and sawdust removal. I'm going to pull the quill gears today as I think it's full of sawdust too.
 
A corner is also a great place to place a mill.
 
On further reflection, I'd suggest you try out a couple of different orientations before securing the mill to the floor. It isn't that hard to scooch it on a flat floor. A lot of people do put their mills in the corner, but the layout of the Clausing is quite a bit different than a Bridgeport. Bridgeport kind of leans into the front so is front heavy as far as movement. Everything is out front with a lot of machine hanging out back. The Clausings are much more upright. The head needs some room to travel on the backside and the table is more inline with the column compared to a Bridgeport.

A corner may work out nicely, but I suspect you will find it creates a lot of wasted space when you look at how far out it has to sit to give decent access to the ends of the table and room for the head to rotate. Mine is in a corner, but not "in the corner" if that makes sense. Angled into the corner just didn't work well in my space.
 
I pulled the quill gears, and was surprised, no sawdust. This machine was bone dry to, table stiff in both directions. Now moves along nice and smooth. And the gears are perfect. No gasket on the gear box cover and that surprised me. Parts diagram doesn't show a gasket. Still lot of scrubbing to do, and more oil. Quill looks OK, bearings are ok. I asked Clausing about a new drawbar just in case but this one is fine. I have one broken handle that happened in transit. And one missing handle.
 
I removed the gear drive head yesterday. No issues like broken gears. But it just didn't seem to work like it should. The manual clearly shows a ball bearing and spring detent in the upper section of the housing. I couldn't find one. Just an upper hole full of crsp. Blew it out and there was a ball bearing and spring. It doesn't go in the upper hole. The upper hole is the oil channel when they drilled the bottom hole. The bottom hole is drilled shallow just for the spring and bearing. Guess someone has had it apart before. I put wheel bearing grease in the spring and set the ball on top. I did the work over a clear plastic tote as that ball ran away numerous times. So the way I'd did it was start the shift where it goes just up to the ball bearing. Then I used a small screw driver to push the ball down while pushing the shaft into place. Needed more hands. But now the detent feature works. The end of the main shift is v not a smooth machined surface on this one. It probably should be turned down and a bushing installed in the head. I would have thought Clausing would have put bushings on all the gears. Maybe that's why there are so many issues with gears breaking in this model and design.
I also took apart the vice that came with it. It's a nice heavy Clausing vice that turns and has a graduated scale.
Now I'm working on the wiring as we had to disconnect the wire to the head when we pulled it apart.
 

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