Buying your first a lathe...what you wish you knew?

[DavidR8]

< snip >
But the main thing that I wish I knew before buying a lathe, is that it can be easy to spend 2000$ on tooling for it. The wider range of things you are doing the more costly your tooling is. On my small lathe that cost me 2K$, I've put around 2K into it, not including inserts and other consumables.

^^^^ this!

Oh wait... I was warned. Several times!


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[parshal]

What it doesn't do it make heavy cuts very well. I refused to make a bushing for my new reloading press because of the time it would have taken for me to turn down 2.75" to 1.5".

I know that feeling! I'll make cuts up to .050" on mine but I've got a fan blowing all the smoke away so I can see. I have to make a few more passes to clean up the horrible finish if I do cuts larger than .050".

Taking a 1.250" barrel to 1.0623" takes more time than I'd like to admit on my 1340.

 

[Dabbler]

@parshal One thing I avoid like the plague is heating up the barrel. the type of steel used in most gun barrels contains enough stress that I'd be wary of releasing it with heat, even the mild heat of vaporizing oil... For a while we'd TIG weld on flash hiders to make up 18.5" barrels, until we found out that the point of impact changed noticeably only heating up the last bit of the barrel like that.

The effect is less with less heat applied, but over the entire length of the barrel, well, I wouldn't risk it... I understand some barrel makers do the final cutting on the lands and grooves after profiling because of the movement of the metal from profiling the barrel.

 

[starr256]

If you are a novice and doing this on your own, I would suggest finding an experienced setup machinist to assist you in getting it aligned. Watch and ask questions. The lathe can be be quite precise if setup correctly. Its a small additional expense, but the return is that you can work on your general skills knowing that your results are do to your capabilities without worrying about alignment issues. Just my $0.26 worth of advice.

 

[parshal]

@parshal The effect is less with less heat applied, but over the entire length of the barrel, well, I wouldn't risk it...

I don't profile barrels. I'm talking about reducing the diameter for the tenon. Either way, though, point taken.

I apologize to the OP for derailing the thread.