I've been a hobby machinist for several years now, but when I graduated from college I lost access to the machine shop... I felt somewhat lost but couldn't afford any machinery at the time.

Fast forward to today... just returned from Afghanistan (earned some extra money) and started looking for a cheap lathe. My dad told me not to buy anything just yet because my high school was selling their last lathe from shop class in an upcoming consignment auction. I went, checked it out, and bought it.

It's a 1972 SB 10K 3 1/2' bed UMD cabinet model. It came with the taper attachment (complete minus 1 gib), thread dial, and a few mixed accessories. No 4 jaw chuck or steady rest though

It was in "abused" condition, but not "overused" The bed was in good shape, the gears all looked great except for 1 broken tooth off the small headstock gear on the cone-pulley. The tailstock is a bit "tight" and won't eject the center but I haven't had a chance to tear it apart. Some "genius" decided to weld the ball-crank retaining nuts in place, but I've corrected that by removing them and filing down the weld marks on the ball cranks; scrapped the nuts and ordered new nuts for $9 each from Steve Wells. The cross-slide screw was a bit worn and the nut was completely shot. I'm certain this was from neglect and not over-use. I can only imagine how many times the cross slide was engaged while the taper attachment lock-bolt was tightened down causing extreme wear on the screw & nut. The wear on the bed & slide do not indicate that this was used enough to wear out the cross-slide screw. New acme screw has been ordered from Steve. I had intended to run it how it was, but seeing how bad the cross-slide was I decided to just tear it down completely and check everything out. As abused as it was, I'm certain it was neglected at some point in time and it could probably really use a good clean & lube job from top to bottom. I've done a partial tear-down (cross-slide & compound slide) on the lathe, cleaning, lubing, & reassembling as I go, but I don't feel comfortable going too far until my rebuild manual gets here, until then, things will just have to wait.

I paid $340 at the auction plus $250 for a new single phase motor & wiring. With all of the other things I've ordered so far I have about $750 in it so far and will easily have over $1k by the time I'm finished. I really want an Aloris AXA toolpost but that may have to wait. A posting on a firearms forum about my new lathe and possible gun-projects and/or gunsmithing business sparked an un-solicited offer on an Index mill. The deal was too good to pass up and I now own it although I've never seen it in person. The guy is reputable and I trust him to be honest. Sounded like a pretty good deal. It was a clean Index 756 with new DRO Pros 3-axis DRO, VFD, and some tooling for $2k. I had to work hard to convince my wife how much I needed to have it... so I'm hoping I can put it to good work. I'm sure I'll be stopping in here from time to time trying to pick up some parts/accessories etc. I've been doing plenty of reading the last few weeks and just now got approved as a member.

BTW, does anybody know much about the Index 756? Specs & Info? I've read just about every thread I can find on Index mills but not very much info out there on the model 756.