Bench Lathe Suggestions

S

SpydieKnut

Joined
Nov 24, 2005
Messages
3
Hello All,

I finally saved up a decent amount of $ (1500) and want to pick up a decent bench / precision lathe. Mostly want to do stuff like small car parts, some knife pins, and maybe some rifle smithing. I've looked at a number of different ones from

Emco Compact 5 ( no longer made as far as I can tell )
Prazi ($$ pricey)
chinese - Grizzley, Enco, ( I'd like to avoid, although some look OK)
Sherline ( Amercian, but maybe too small)

Does anyone have any experience? Can you make a recommendation?

Appreciate any suggestions - Thanks
 
I have using a JET 9x20 for about two years now and like it alot. Last summer I bought a Bison 5" four jaw chuck which is much more efficient then the stock 4" 3 jaw. The unit cost around $1200 and weighs around 300 Lbs. The motor has plenty of power and I had to do very little tuning or clean up on it.
 
While i have no direct experience with Grizzly lathes, I have had good luck with the other grizzly products I have bought. I have a large planer, band saw and cabinet saw, as well as many of the attachment/add ons. I have had good experiences with customer service from them too. A local wood shop has an extensive inventory of their products and like them very much.

On a second level, have you considered buying used? My lathe is a South Bend that I got from a local high school that was disbanding its metal shop. I paid $1000 with a complete kennedy tool box of tooling and jaws, and chucks etc. The Kennedy roll around was worth a Grand. My local craigs list has three or four available now, used, but in good shape, and with lots of expensive extras.
 
I would also agree that Grizzly is a good option for the money. I have one of thier dovetail mill/drill units and have no complaints at all. It is built very solid and tight and has been working like a champ since last spring.

Southern Tool usually has a free freight special going with the JET 9x20. That is where I purchased mine and had it in three days.
 
You may get more answers in the shop talk section, wouldn’t hurt to fill out your profile, that is one of the first things that they guys over there usually ask for from new folks. Hope this cut and paste works since the search is currently disabled for non-paying members, here is a thread from August about lathes http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=491670

There is a Sherline in the university art metals studio I work in, that doesn’t get much use, but seems well made. The Sherline, Tiag and similar machines are very small and tend to use proprietary accessories, there wasn’t much aftermarket stuff available for them when I was lathe shopping, but that has been a few years ago. Spend some time on mini-lathe.com and littlemachineshop.com there is a lot of info about the small import machines and consider you will spend as much and probably more (definitely more over the years) than the lathe itself on tooling and accessories. I have a 7 x 12 Grizzly that I’m pretty happy with, I have and still am tuning and modifying it, but that is part of the fun for me. I saw a larger Grizzly lathe, maybe 12 x 36 or 13 x 40 in an electrical motor repair shop a couple of weeks ago, the first large Grizzly I’d seen in a “serious” application, I asked about it and was told it got quite a bit of use and they hadn’t had any problems. You don’t say where you are and how much or what type of experience you have, like Guntotin_fool said looking at used machines may turn up a good deal, if you are comfortable in checking out used machines.

Todd
 
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