thanks all for the replies! nice to see a few other locally situated folks. My interests are all over the place for sure, initially came over from the rc hobby but really I'm interested in being able to make whatever I want!
I'd like to make my own tooling and tools but atm just have to be content with the mostly hands off learning due to my current living situation (apt).
So Ive got a couple smaller lathes (one, my first, is a pos mix-matched atlas and ?? that somebody local prob shouldn't have sold to me but anyways..., the other is the craftex b1117l) and a mill/drill , its a chinese clone that I cant recall the brand of atm, model is frv-30-200...
I've been collecting some tooling and tools as I'm able to and have a few items now that I'd like to try calibrating and have been running into trouble using what I've got, hence part of my interest in a set of decent gage blocks...I believe its something I'll need consistently so rather than buy a new b grade set that came straight from china, I'd take a look around and see what comes up.
I'm considering a starret rs81 a1 set off duhbay that is missing a few (3) of the smaller blocks. It appears to be well used but not terrible, and is priced reasonably imo at about 300ish cdn delivered. Id drop the link but think its not allowed yet although would be curious to hear a more experienced opinion of the set...anyways. Its only 175usd (~225cdn) but of course the shipping from new york is 75$.
Yep i have noticed a cluster of machinist activity in Alb, suppose it only makes sense but at the same time i was more referring to farther east like ont and quebec...while searching for equipment last year I seemed to most often find online leads to machines located in quebec,, although there certainly were leads from alb too. Perhaps has more to do with the sites I was traversing?
Tooling has been a bit of a bummer I'll say, there seems to be tons of it available out of the states but the price of shipping it up makes these deals less than stellar...of course theres always chinese tooling...the shipping is even free typically.
Thanks again everyone, glad to hang out. J