Thanks for the input! I was thinking about the Taig Micro lathe... so this is a step up in size, ha.... now that would have been cramped. In my position, I think I have to prefer a more turn-key package vs a bring it back to live SB or more commercial built lathe.... then when I know a bit more, a little rougher but better bones machine probably would be ideal. I may actually call on an ad for a MyFord Super 7, that seems to be inline with the SB9 and heavier duty lathes but it needs a little work and virtually no tooling and they are asking $3k... now that seems high but, that may be a great offer.... it's not like these pop up all the time..
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Atlas 101.21400 used w/accessories, $1,500, plan to buy... thoughts?
mickri and wa5cab... thanks for feedback. I figured with aluminum, HSS would be great and I do have a grinder and belt sander to try out sharpening and shaping my own bits. Though, I think some carbide is coming with it. I'll check out Mikeys threads on grinding tool bits.
Like many others on the net, I've already landed on Mr. Pete aka Tubalcain youtube channel many times... it's been a great way to explore this and learn until I get the lathe in front of me.
I'm gonna make one last call on a MyFord Super 7 ad, nearly no tooling other than a chuck and more crusty and around the $3,000... it seems like this MyFord Super 7 is in a different class than the Atlas 618... but I think the Atlas is more up my alley at this time in my lathe adventure.
Like many others on the net, I've already landed on Mr. Pete aka Tubalcain youtube channel many times... it's been a great way to explore this and learn until I get the lathe in front of me.
I'm gonna make one last call on a MyFord Super 7 ad, nearly no tooling other than a chuck and more crusty and around the $3,000... it seems like this MyFord Super 7 is in a different class than the Atlas 618... but I think the Atlas is more up my alley at this time in my lathe adventure.
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The MyFord Super 7 is a flat bed way machine , just like all Atlas machines . All South Bends are "V" bed way machines , arguably a "V" bed machine is more precision and heavy duty , but on the other hand a Warner Swasey is a flat bed way machine and it doesn't get much more heavy duty than that .
On your 618 the distance above the cross slide is 2" , that is called "swing" . Swing is the distance above saddle or bed , X's 2 .
Mark .
On your 618 the distance above the cross slide is 2" , that is called "swing" . Swing is the distance above saddle or bed , X's 2 .
Mark .
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Around here (Northern California) $1500 is sky high, but you can almost always find at least one 6" Atlas / Craftsman lathe on CL at any time. Most seem to sell within a week or two at $500-600, but those are usually needing a bit of work, and with minimal tooling. Better condition / well tooled ones also turn up in that price range but they usually sell much faster at that price.
I picked up a well tooled 101.21400 last year for $650, but it did require a lot of clean up. In good condition but it had been sitting for a long time and a lot of parts were seized up with old dried up oil which required a tear down and cleaning.
After I bought mine I watched another that appeared to be in good shape, with lots of tooling and a decent home built bench sit for a couple months. Started at $1200, and week by week the price dropped by $100. It finally went away after it got to $800.
There is one now asking $1200, minimal tooling but has an original cast iron and wood stand, the listing is 21 days old.
Location makes a big difference on price. As I said these are not hard to find around here which keeps the price down. There is also the SB9 Matt mentioned. These also turn up quite often in the $1000-2000 range, which I think holds down the price on the 6". Once you break $1000 I think a lot of people start to consider a basic tooled 9" vs a well tooled 6".
If I were starting from scratch with a budget in the $1500 range I'd be putting a lot of effort into finding a short bed South Bend 9A. In my opinion a 9x17" or 9x22" 9A is probably one of the best common options for a space constrained shop. Heavier, but not a great deal larger than an Atlas 6", or Chinese 7x16" mini lathe. A well optioned small lathe with quick change gear box, and power cross feed. There are even better lathes in this class but much less common. A Myford 7 with quick change gear box would also be on my short list, but the few I've seen go for a fair bit of money and in the US parts will not be plentiful, but Myford is still in business.
Back to your Craftsman, they are not bad small lathes, and I think preferable to many of the cheaper small lathes. Your local market will play a huge part in what is a good price. The fact that this one seems to have had a good life and a proper refurbishment (not just a clean and paint job) and is basically take it home and go to work is worth something.
If this is simply a buy it to learn and then resell in a year or two I'd pass, because it will be hard to even break even if you sell it. If you are pretty sure this is going to fit your needs and will be with you for sometime, then the price is less important. So you over pay by $500, divide that by 10 years of enjoyment and it becomes trivial.
Yes you may find you need a larger lathe down the road, but there is no rule that you can only have one lathe and in fact it is quite common to have two or more (although 9 might be bordering on mental illness
).
I picked up a well tooled 101.21400 last year for $650, but it did require a lot of clean up. In good condition but it had been sitting for a long time and a lot of parts were seized up with old dried up oil which required a tear down and cleaning.
After I bought mine I watched another that appeared to be in good shape, with lots of tooling and a decent home built bench sit for a couple months. Started at $1200, and week by week the price dropped by $100. It finally went away after it got to $800.
There is one now asking $1200, minimal tooling but has an original cast iron and wood stand, the listing is 21 days old.
Location makes a big difference on price. As I said these are not hard to find around here which keeps the price down. There is also the SB9 Matt mentioned. These also turn up quite often in the $1000-2000 range, which I think holds down the price on the 6". Once you break $1000 I think a lot of people start to consider a basic tooled 9" vs a well tooled 6".
If I were starting from scratch with a budget in the $1500 range I'd be putting a lot of effort into finding a short bed South Bend 9A. In my opinion a 9x17" or 9x22" 9A is probably one of the best common options for a space constrained shop. Heavier, but not a great deal larger than an Atlas 6", or Chinese 7x16" mini lathe. A well optioned small lathe with quick change gear box, and power cross feed. There are even better lathes in this class but much less common. A Myford 7 with quick change gear box would also be on my short list, but the few I've seen go for a fair bit of money and in the US parts will not be plentiful, but Myford is still in business.
Back to your Craftsman, they are not bad small lathes, and I think preferable to many of the cheaper small lathes. Your local market will play a huge part in what is a good price. The fact that this one seems to have had a good life and a proper refurbishment (not just a clean and paint job) and is basically take it home and go to work is worth something.
If this is simply a buy it to learn and then resell in a year or two I'd pass, because it will be hard to even break even if you sell it. If you are pretty sure this is going to fit your needs and will be with you for sometime, then the price is less important. So you over pay by $500, divide that by 10 years of enjoyment and it becomes trivial.
Yes you may find you need a larger lathe down the road, but there is no rule that you can only have one lathe and in fact it is quite common to have two or more (although 9 might be bordering on mental illness
).Around here (Northern California) $1500 is sky high, but you can almost always find at least one 6" Atlas / Craftsman lathe on CL at any time. Most seem to sell within a week or two at $500-600, but those are usually needing a bit of work, and with minimal tooling. Better condition / well tooled ones also turn up in that price range but they usually sell much faster at that price.
I picked up a well tooled 101.21400 last year for $650, but it did require a lot of clean up. In good condition but it had been sitting for a long time and a lot of parts were seized up with old dried up oil which required a tear down and cleaning.
After I bought mine I watched another that appeared to be in good shape, with lots of tooling and a decent home built bench sit for a couple months. Started at $1200, and week by week the price dropped by $100. It finally went away after it got to $800.
There is one now asking $1200, minimal tooling but has an original cast iron and wood stand, the listing is 21 days old.
Location makes a big difference on price. As I said these are not hard to find around here which keeps the price down. There is also the SB9 Matt mentioned. These also turn up quite often in the $1000-2000 range, which I think holds down the price on the 6". Once you break $1000 I think a lot of people start to consider a basic tooled 9" vs a well tooled 6".
If I were starting from scratch with a budget in the $1500 range I'd be putting a lot of effort into finding a short bed South Bend 9A. In my opinion a 9x17" or 9x22" 9A is probably one of the best common options for a space constrained shop. Heavier, but not a great deal larger than an Atlas 6", or Chinese 7x16" mini lathe. A well optioned small lathe with quick change gear box, and power cross feed. There are even better lathes in this class but much less common. A Myford 7 with quick change gear box would also be on my short list, but the few I've seen go for a fair bit of money and in the US parts will not be plentiful, but Myford is still in business.
Back to your Craftsman, they are not bad small lathes, and I think preferable to many of the cheaper small lathes. Your local market will play a huge part in what is a good price. The fact that this one seems to have had a good life and a proper refurbishment (not just a clean and paint job) and is basically take it home and go to work is worth something.
If this is simply a buy it to learn and then resell in a year or two I'd pass, because it will be hard to even break even if you sell it. If you are pretty sure this is going to fit your needs and will be with you for sometime, then the price is less important. So you over pay by $500, divide that by 10 years of enjoyment and it becomes trivial.
Yes you may find you need a larger lathe down the road, but there is no rule that you can only have one lathe and in fact it is quite common to have two or more (although 9 might be bordering on mental illness
Good input! Can't say I have watched the market here in Ohio for good old used lathes, but they don't seem that common as your area, certainly not in turn-key pristine condition for sure. This one appears to have been maintained over the years, not needing a full refurbish for whatever that's worth. If I had to spend 10+ hours refurbishing something... that's worth $ to me... a refurb/restore would be fun if I had a lot more time.
I have contemplated flip flopping and looking harder at the LMS HiTorque 7x16 Deluxe or even the 8.5x20 version (that's about as big space wise as I want to go and double what I care to spend. I don't want a fixer upper, having something that is relatively common (even if older) is valuable... so MyFord's out out after reading a bit. The LMS 7 x 16 deluxe would be $2,400 to my door with very limited tooling. I know I can always grow into spending more on tooling... all at once is nice, but not critical. My budget = best bank for the buck and something soon.
The Taig Micro Lathe is what got me started, a fully spec'd with all their options and the 5C head stock was around $1400... so that began my search into other bench top lathes with a foot print up to 24" x 48". Landed on the Atlas 618 style and seems like a great size for me.
I don't know how much the 6" vs 9" swing size matters for what I want to do. A usable length up to 10" usable and 3" swing is all I really need... but I do want something that is of quality.... and I really don't know what I'll be missing by not having a dial turn variable speed motor, digital read outs and or quick change gear box.
Plus I'm itching to buy... which does not favor the pocket book to wait for those rare deals. At least, the seller in the one I plan to pick up tomorrow will be on the good end of the deal and he'll have a good day!
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There is something to be said for buying a machine that you can just bring home and get to work. That is what sold me on Sherline. I was only looking for a small lathe to turn parts for models, so 1-1/4" diameter and a few inches long would be on the large end. Sherline have a reputation for very good take it out of the box and be turning metal in a couple hours, they also have an extensive range of accessories. At the time a well tooled Sherline was considerably more expensive than a 7x14 mini-lathe.
The Sherline has been perfect for my initial needs, the problem came when machining turned into a hobby of its own rather than the lathe just being a tool supporting another hobby. That little lathe still gets a lot of use, I just added larger machines to tackle the larger projects I became interested in. The Sherline not only continues to be used for my original intent but it is very well tooled so I can often go back to it for small parts instead of buying new specialty tooling for one of the larger machines.
A side effect of all of this has been developing a third hobby, that of small machine tool rescue. I should probably start to consider a catch and release program, but I'm not there yet, I still have a bit of space left in the shop.
The Atlas / Craftsman lathes came out in the late 1930s and still retain a great deal of popularity 80 years later. As long as it is big enough to support your projects it should work fine for you. Buying a used machine often does mean spending some time getting it ready to go. Nothing wrong with paying a premium for a ready to run lathe if your time is of more value than a few hundred dollars, everybody has different priorities.
If you do find like I did your projects increase in size then when that time comes you will be looking for a bigger lathe from a much better place. The Craftsman lathes don't take up much space and you would not be the first to discover a small lathe complements a larger lathe quite nicely.
I considered the Taig and Sherline and all their tooling...top notch for the micro lathe category. I really like the simplicity of the Taig micro lathe. If they were just a bit longer on the center to center I would have gone that route already and not broadened my search. Probably what i'll say about the 618... I just wish I was a bit longer, etc.... Looking forward to some tweaking and setup time just getting familiar with the atlas 618 controls... part of the fun.There is something to be said for buying a machine that you can just bring home and get to work. That is what sold me on Sherline. I was only looking for a small lathe to turn parts for models, so 1-1/4" diameter and a few inches long would be on the large end. Sherline have a reputation for very good take it out of the box and be turning metal in a couple hours, they also have an extensive range of accessories. At the time a well tooled Sherline was considerably more expensive than a 7x14 mini-lathe.
The Sherline has been perfect for my initial needs, the problem came when machining turned into a hobby of its own rather than the lathe just being a tool supporting another hobby. That little lathe still gets a lot of use, I just added larger machines to tackle the larger projects I became interested in. The Sherline not only continues to be used for my original intent but it is very well tooled so I can often go back to it for small parts instead of buying new specialty tooling for one of the larger machines.
A side effect of all of this has been developing a third hobby, that of small machine tool rescue. I should probably start to consider a catch and release program, but I'm not there yet, I still have a bit of space left in the shop.
The Atlas / Craftsman lathes came out in the late 1930s and still retain a great deal of popularity 80 years later. As long as it is big enough to support your projects it should work fine for you. Buying a used machine often does mean spending some time getting it ready to go. Nothing wrong with paying a premium for a ready to run lathe if your time is of more value than a few hundred dollars, everybody has different priorities.
If you do find like I did your projects increase in size then when that time comes you will be looking for a bigger lathe from a much better place. The Craftsman lathes don't take up much space and you would not be the first to discover a small lathe complements a larger lathe quite nicely.
If I spend a lot to have a heavy duty lathe, I'll end up making small parts, if I get small lathe, I'll only have the need/want to make large parts... seems about 50/50 when I speculate what I need. Never thought I needed a band saw in my woodworking shop, bought a small one and wondered how I got by so long without one, can't believe how useful it is, especially now I'm getting into metal working... bought a huge dust collector, sold it and much happier with a high performance and much smaller high pressure vacuum, smaller hoses, etc...
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Minor correction to an earlier statement - The first Atlas lathe, which was also sold for a few years by Sears, was the 9" that first came out in early 1932. It eventually came in four different bed lengths, 9 x 18 through 9 x 36. With some overlap, It was replaced by the 10" (1935) under the Atlas badge and 12" (1936) sold by Sears under the Craftsman badge. The 618 (and the short-lived 612) came out in 1937 and remained in production with relatively few changes until about 1972.
I once for many years ran the Engineering Department of an NDT company and have always considered tooling as mostly being consumables. And don't usually consider it as having much effect on price on the used equipment market. Things like chucks, milling attachments, collet attachments and/or sets, steady and center rests, taper attachments. etc. I would call generically accessories. Typical going prices for most Atlas or Craftsman 6" accessories are in the $100 to $150 range. So in round numbers, subtract $100 or so for each accessory being included in a deal and you have the effective asking price of the lathe by itself.
And I would not consider the Atlas 618 (or Craftsman 101.21400) or any other 6" or 7" swing machine in the same breath with any 9" to 12" machine. If you need one, the other would most likely be unsuitable for you (or unnecessarily expensive.).
Another thing to be considered is the type of spindle bearing. The four choices are usually babbit, oilite, ball or tapered roller. All four are technically replaceable. But few of us have either the equipment or the ability required to properly replace babbit bearings.
I once for many years ran the Engineering Department of an NDT company and have always considered tooling as mostly being consumables. And don't usually consider it as having much effect on price on the used equipment market. Things like chucks, milling attachments, collet attachments and/or sets, steady and center rests, taper attachments. etc. I would call generically accessories. Typical going prices for most Atlas or Craftsman 6" accessories are in the $100 to $150 range. So in round numbers, subtract $100 or so for each accessory being included in a deal and you have the effective asking price of the lathe by itself.
And I would not consider the Atlas 618 (or Craftsman 101.21400) or any other 6" or 7" swing machine in the same breath with any 9" to 12" machine. If you need one, the other would most likely be unsuitable for you (or unnecessarily expensive.).
Another thing to be considered is the type of spindle bearing. The four choices are usually babbit, oilite, ball or tapered roller. All four are technically replaceable. But few of us have either the equipment or the ability required to properly replace babbit bearings.
So a $1500 Craftsman 101.21400 w/Timken bearings (assuming pristine condition) isn't SO crazy high considering it comes with.. (pics show some items).
- 3 jaw chuck
- 4 jaw chuck
- face plate
- steady rest
- 0XA quick change too holder (9 holders)
- live center
- dead center
- boring bars
- micro meter carriage stop
- 3 tail stock chuck (I only need 1)
- Extra lead screw, cross feed screw and saddle screw
- Extra gears
- Way and shaft oils
- Nearly new reamers (not sure how many or what)
- ER collet holder for MT2 taper and draw bar
- And... some extra bar stock and measuring devices like magnet 2" dial throw, 2" to 6" import micrometers, universal pitch mic
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Though, he does say it was rebuilt with roller bearings.. I'll ask if those were timken roller bearings I assume the would have to be.
But then I look at the LMS HiTorque 8.5x20 Bench Lathe, Deluxe but TWICE the price and wonder how cool... or wow, I spend double and it didn't really gain me anything.
Separating my $ from my wallet is quite the phycological event... as much as I want to spend it, I don't. First and foremost, I want to ensure as much as possible it's a good purchase, or steer away from the road to frustration.
Everyone chiming in has been SUPER helpful, thanks all!
Attachments
"Tooling" vs "Accessories"... starting to pick up on the terminology and vernacular of lathe speak.
I know the tooling and accessories can cost more than the lathe...but it sill seems like having a solid foundation to build around and accessorize is critical the lathe itself. Then how all that can transfer to another lathe depending on spindle nose thread, which MT tapers are in head and tail stocks.... or maybe if you upgrade ,you likely can carry over much tooling.
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