A couple of things worth mentioning about Hemingway kits and my experiences during the build.

Most of the Hemingway kits have all the dimensions in imperial although where they supply hardware it’s metric (the cap screw which holds the drill guide support is M5 for example). Although I have a set of imperial reamers, I don’t have many imperial taps and dies (you can count both on one hand I think) so I converted all the screw threads to metric. I also used M6 threaded rod as I had it in stock, rather than the two different threads quoted for the pivot screw (1/4 x 40tpi and 1/4 BSW) and the 1/4 x 40 tpi for the jack screw.

The second thing, which isn’t about the kit per se, but my experience or rather inexperience in milling grooves in steel. I was using 6mm carbide end mill in place of the quoted 1/4″ slot drill and proceeding cautiously. After a bit I plucked up the courage to feed a bit faster and what a difference it made to the cutting.

I know that carbide lathe tooling seems to like higher speeds and faster feeds to find the sweet spot where it cuts well and leaves a nice finish. But I hadn’t translated that into mill tooling, as most of my experience milling to date has been with HSS tooling.