home shop lathe

[shooterdon]

Even a small lathe is very useful. I bought mine used 15 years ago after a guy realized it was too small for what he wanted to do. It was 2 months old. A Jet 9x20. Paid $750 for it with a bit of tooling. A new one will likely be $3000+ now.

Figure out what 95% of the jobs you need to do require and make that your minimum size.

If you can be patient, I think quite a few will be available the used with companies in trouble and hobbyists dying off.

 

[WinterDeere]

I appreciate all the posts of big old vintage iron. I had a shop full of 1000 - 2500# machinery when I moved into this place 12 years ago, which made moving real fun. But over the last decade I've sold most of it off, making room for cars, tractors, sailboats. So, not looking to jump back into a big lathe, I'm definitely in the "bench top" class here, Enco, Jet, Eastwood, the Griz.

No one has mentioned Vevor, but they're all over the interweb with < $1k benchtop stuff. Too new to have many opinions out there?

Again, since I do so much work with commercial machine shops, I can always get them to do anything that won't fit on my own machine. I just don't want to be running to one of them for the dozen small things that come up every year.

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

I appreciate all the posts of big old vintage iron. I had a shop full of 1000 - 2500# machinery when I moved into this place 12 years ago, which made moving real fun. But over the last decade I've sold most of it off, making room for cars, tractors, sailboats. So, not looking to jump back into a big lathe, I'm definitely in the "bench top" class here, Enco, Jet, Eastwood, the Griz.

No one has mentioned Vevor, but they're all over the interweb with < $1k benchtop stuff. Too new to have many opinions out there?

Again, since I do so much work with commercial machine shops, I can always get them to do anything that won't fit on my own machine. I just don't want to be running to one of them for the dozen small things that come up every year.

Some Vevor is good some is bad. The are building for certain markets, and their quality and quality controls Vary greatly. Some they make, some is rebranded from other manufacturers.

If you go with Vevor, be sure to buy from someone who will let you return it, if your not happy.

 

[rangerfredbob]

For import stuff look into littlemachineshop.com they spec the best (above the Grizzly spec) for the same machine, most of the Seig lathes are made in the same place with a different color of paint... we have one of their 9x16? lathes at work, it's a pretty nice unit and at $1600 when we got it the price wasn't too bad... I have a 7x12 Seig labeled as Speedway Series back from the Homier tool truck sales and you can make a lot with that little guy...

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I got my lathe in trade for milling some logs for a guy,

It's a European made, Turn Master 12 X 30 gear drive.

It's in great shape...

SR

 

[WinterDeere]

Nice! Any issue adapting to cut UN threads on that, or is that not something you're doing?

 

[Sawyer Rob]

If that question was aimed at me, I only use the lathe occasionally, and I haven't used it to cut any threads....yet.

I'm really just a wanna-b machinist, my dad was the real machinist.

SR

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Here's a better pict. of the controls,

SR

 

[WinterDeere]

Looks like you could still do UN threading on that SR, eg. DB4 for 1/4-20. Not sure I follow the W X Y for what appears to be metric pitches, but no matter. Very cool!

 

[LD1]

Looks like you could still do UN threading on that SR, eg. DB4 for 1/4-20. Not sure I follow the W X Y for what appears to be metric pitches, but no matter. Very cool!

The symbols around the WXY as well as on the UN thread pitches appear to correlate to changeable gearing inside the headstock