If you are NEW to milling, I would recommend Harold Halls Book "The Milling Machine for the Home Machinists" which is the 'US' title for "The Milling Machine, and Accessories, Choosing and Using, Number 49. ISBN 978 185486 266 2"
And the 'US' version is IMO are BS. If this version is supposed to be 'slightly edited version for the American market' I would expect ALL of the metric measurement references would be translated to US or imperial measurements or similar, which they ARE NOT!! There are so few US - imperial measurement references in the books that if the British versions are cheaper just buy them.
The book "the milling machine" is described as more 'theoretical' and it covers the various models and types of Mills available aka purchasing decisions.. Then it moves into tooling, clamping, vices, etc. I actually found the book quite useful and learned several things from it (i've had a 'Micro mill for a couple years and jsut picked up an RF 30 at Thanksgiving.)
One thing about Harold Hall's setups on the mill is that he likes to use angle plates... A lot....And, He does come up with a couple of novel uses for angle plates.. If you have a pair of them you can use them (with some all threaded rod) as a "two piece vice". put one angle plate on each end of what you want to mill and use all thread to pull them together.
Another point he makes that I plan to follow up on, is that a good quality rotary table can be fitted with indexing plates and used in place of an indexing head. Grizzly sells a 6 inch setup that would seem to fill that bill.
He also makes the point that if you have occasional need for a tilting angle plate, you can attach a standard 90 degree angle plate to a rotary table that is mounted in the vertical orientation and then just 'dial-up' the angle you want.
Hall also has another book, "milling for a home machinist' or 'Milling a complete course' Which I bought, but it's NOT my favorite and that book will probably go on the 'sell as a used book' pile.
The 'Milling a complete COURSE" is VERY cooking recipe like; Take a piece of 30mm steel and mill 8m slot 12 mm from the end for 15mm, then mill slot...... I was constantly looking at the pictures for each 'Project' trying to figure out what part he making and what it was intended to do.
The whole point of the 'course' in milling is to construct a grinding rest and an end mill sharpening fixture for it. That includes turning SPECIAL COLLETS for the fixture.
IMO I plan to go more in the direction of this post:
www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/f13/sharpening-end-mills-lathe-19134 I've already got multiple 'precision' spindles in my shop with calibrated X - Y tables, etc so WHY would I go to all of the effort, 1st to convert every measurement in the book to US measurements. And ESPECIALLY TURN MY OWN Collets??? I just bought an 8 piece R8 Collet set from Enco with discounts for $21... Why not use them or ER collects, of better yet the 4 inch 4 jaw on my 7x lathe will hold any and ALL of the tooling I have, be that an end mill or otherwise for sharpening.
Either way the 2ND book has a couple of good things in it as far as setups and clamping, which the other book more or less covered already as well.
You opinions or mileage may vary.
