Similar story for me. Had shop class in high school and got to use lathes and mills, then basically nothing for 20 years when back issues started and I got a 9x20 lathe. 4 surgeries so far and counting and 10 years later I've got lots of spare time on my hands. The shop has grown to 3 lathes, a horizontal mill and the drill mill. Since this thread was started I added a 9x49 jet mill that I still need to move into the shop. The only reason I got the 9x49 mill is that table space and X axis travel limits what you can do on a drill/mill or mini mill. The table on my HF drill/mill is 28 3/4" long edge to edge, 27 1/4" once you get the power feed on it (well worth the cost) and with a knock off Kalamazoo 5c spin indexer along with a 21.5" barrel (with 3/4"-1" of it inside the collet) and a short home made tailstock ends up with a total length slightly over 30". Table travel is about 20-1/2". The round column lets you swing the head L-R to be able to use the entire travel of the table. In order to get a 30" setup on a 27.25" table I had to bolt it to a 3/4"x 4"x 30" flat bar and then bolt the bar to the table. It does make a handy draw filing and sanding/polishing jig when clamped to the work bench once you're done milling. The point of my ramblings is to think about what barrel lengths or projects you want to do and what the setup lengths will be. I've seen where guys have made similar jigs like mine and milled what they could, then moved the jig over to be able to mill something longer than the table travel of their mill. Matching to two cuts up isn't impossible, but generally you'll be able to see where they start/stop which may not be an issue if you're going to draw file and sand/polish the octagon barrel afterwards. Here's a shot of the setup I used on a 1891 Mauser barrel shown close to being done on the mill on the previous page. Google home made indexers. I almost made one that used a gear to index the barrel which would of saved me a few inches of table space. With a mill and a lathe you can make quite a few of the accessories yourself.