Since my current milling technique involves rotary burrs, a hand drill, and an underpowered Harbor Freight bench grinder, it's hard to go backwards. I spent last night looking at a bunch of different knee mills. Again let me state that I am not looking at a round column mill/drill, nor am I looking at that specific Grizzly knee mill. I am looking at a NOS knee mill that is very close in size, maybe identical, to that Grizzly. What I found that blipped the ironic meter was this knee mill has the best spindle to table clearance of all. The work I have is 14" tall. Add tool changing room, and the 16 and 17 inch mills, some costing 4x as much, are going to be tight. This one is 20.
Also remember that weight is an issue. So is space. Any mill is going to encroach on my lift bay. This is only a 20x25 shop that is to hold two cars and a lift. The SB lathe got most of the spare room.
One of the attractions of that NOS machine is it comes with a box full of cutting tools, collets, and assorted support fixtures. Like the machine itself, they are 15 years old but have 0 hours on them.
Anyway, my final question. The machine does not appear to have reverse. How important is that? I was taught that you NEVER reverse a cutting bit or reamer in the bore And power tapping scares me... we would use the mill to start the tap straight, but only a few threads. We would then finish tapping and extracting by hand. So am I missing something, or is reverse not all that critcal?