Quote Originally Posted by isaac338 View Post
Hoss, I've looked at that mill before - I dig the DRO and it looks like a good machine. There's a store only a few minutes from my house but they didn't have any on display, maybe I'll call and see when they'll have some in stock and I'll have a better look. Worried about the MT2 spindle, though - from what I've read I think I'd rather have an R8.

JustSomeGuy, we're paying about a buck twenty for gas here (i think it's like 120.7 or something). The 13 hour drive is to the HF store - I'd have them ship it to the Yellow Transport depot in Calais, which is only about 5 hours from here. We'd drive down, pick the machine up, camp for the night somewhere, and then drive back the next day. May as well make a vacation out of it Maybe I'd fill a few 20L cans in Maine where gas is like eighty cents

At the border, I'd be tempted to put the mill in the trunk and then buy a pair of pants or something as an excuse for only being stateside for a night.

I'm still torn as to whether to get the X2 or X3.. doesn't help that I have absolutely no experience, ya know? I'll only have about $1200 to spend after this summer job comes through, so it's gonna hurt dropping the whole wad at once, especially since once I'm back in school I probably won't have much money lying around for tooling and the like.

Thanks for the advice, guys.
Issac338,

Let me drop another thing into the mix.
Check past history on Kijiji, Craigs List and eBay for mills in your area. If you go with the X2 and sometime in the future you decide that you absolutely need a bigger mill, I'll bet you could sell the X2 for a fair portion of what you paid for it.
Lets say that you get the X2 from HF for $550 and, all in, it comes to $750 by the time its set up on your workbench. If you take real good care of it and next year, you list it for sale, you can show a link to Princess Auto that has it regularly for $999. It's not as if half the guys on the East coast are trying to sell a benchtop mill. I was looking to get one used for three months. The only X2 or X3 that I saw listed was on Craigs List and was sold by the time I called 4 hours after posting.

BTW, I see that you live in Halifax. I've been there and just have to say, anybody who has never seen the east coast of Canada, is missing one of the prettiest places in the world...