Bolton Lathe/Mill

[IAmJohnny5]

Thanks for all of your advice everyone. I went into the inspection on much more shaky ground, rather than "I'm probably gonna get a lathe today" and it made me take a look at it with a bit more scrutiny than I would have before.

The rust was surprisingly light, it came off just from rubbing it. The unit seemed to move in all directions ok, rust notwithstanding. I wasn't worried about it moving under power, the guy who showed them to me seemed genuine and mentioned that several had sold already and been turned around for profit. (That and I have plenty of electrical experience to sort out any problems)

All that said, I don't know the people who would buy those refurbs, but I certainly won't. I noticed the base was a lot thinner in person, and more susceptible to flex and vibration. That and with how the milling portion was bolted to it definitely made me reconsider, even when he dropped the price to $1100. The final nail in the coffin was when I lifted the cover off the milling motor. I was horrified at how small it was. Just absolutely pathetic. It looked like it would have a hard time with aluminum.

@matthewsx thanks for all the advice and encouragement, to me and others here. You are right that there are certainly much better options always popping up in my area. I have seen them come and go for months but then I was just browsing. I am now looking with intent to buy and that should make the search much easier and quicker. I'll be sure to pop my head in here if I have other questions or concerns, but now I think I have a better understanding of what to look for.

 

[C-Bag]

Impulse buying is your enemy. Take your time and watch some good YouTube vids like Oxtools. He does and excellent overview. It isn’t just running the lathe, it’s checking it for accuracy. The two collar method is a good standard. It seems daunting at first. That’s why I like YouTube vids for the most part. There is a ton to be absorbed here on H-M in threads where guys are asking about what we think. Obviously there is a wide range here but you can get a good overview. Your area has a ton of deals but not without pitfalls. Good hunting.

 

[IAmJohnny5]

Impulse buying is your enemy. Take your time and watch some good YouTube vids like Oxtools. He does and excellent overview.

Honestly, I think if I had impulse bought it, without the advice of everyone here, I probably would have been ok with it. It seemed like a decent but not great lathe and I could work with that. Just take off the mill part and be done with it.

But I am choosing to start off on the right foot and head over heart. It would have made me happy to just get into machining but I’m willing to wait a little longer to be a good machinist right out of the gate. Better in the long run.

 

[DavidR8]

Honestly, I think if I had impulse bought it, without the advice of everyone here, I probably would have been ok with it. It seemed like a decent but not great lathe and I could work with that. Just take off the mill part and be done with it.

But I am choosing to start off on the right foot and head over heart. It would have made me happy to just get into machining but I’m willing to wait a little longer to be a good machinist right out of the gate. Better in the long run.

This is the way!

 

[Aukai]

As stated start with individual machines, pick ones that you can keep the tooling to move up to a bigger better machine as you learn. A mill that uses R8 tooling, and maybe start with a lathe that can use D1-4 chucks etc. That way you buy tooling once, and as you learn, and become more aware of what you want to do, you can choose better quality machines. If it's not for you those should be easy to sell. I chose to keep going, I started with a 12x28 lathe, 9x32 mill, I'm now at 14x40, and 9x50. There are very knowledgeable people here that can guide you with buying new or used, just ask.

 

[Aaron_W]

Combo machines are always a compromise but as combo lathe / mills go the set up on that Bolton is the better option, since the milling column is an actual separate unit added to the lathe. Basically a mill without the base bolted to the bed of the lathe.

Emco is an Austrian company that made a range of popular, good quality small lathes, that offered a milling combo like that.

I have not seen any positive comments about Bolton, they seem to be at the low end of import brands, so probably best that you passed on it.

Combo machines seem like a better deal than they are. When you actually look at the specs for the mill part, they are usually quite small mills, so you really don't save all that much space vs a stand alone lathe and mill. New they cost about the same as a separate lathe and mill too, but used can be good deals since they don't hold their value as well.

It is always hard to find a real apples to apples match for the mill on a combo, but the one on that Bolton is probably comparable to this little 6x20" mill from Grizzly, which only needs an area of about 2x3 feet. One of the common 7x27" mills like the Grizzly G0704 or Precision Matthews PM25 would be far superior and still only needs a space of about 2x4 feet.

 

[C-Bag]

Honestly, I think if I had impulse bought it, without the advice of everyone here, I probably would have been ok with it.

If you look closely here on HM you see buyer’s remorse. John/matthewsx knows intimately of what he talks about. Buying from a local is a double edged sword. There are some really good salesmen out there and you don’t have any real recourse after you get it home. And when there’s no support you can end up with a boat anchor. What I find in my adventures is I often time need the very machine to make the repair or part so it’s doubly frustrating. I bought a HF 9x20 that the guy had basically decked it out with most of the improvements that the enthusiasts of that particular lathe recommended. It was unused, still had the cosmolene in spots and the ways were completely new. In researching closely what I wanted to be able to do I was pretty sure 7x lathe would cover most of what I foresaw so decided to go the next size. The same version lathe is still sold by Grizzly so I can get parts which I already have. But I’ve spent a lot of time working the bugs out to get it more and more accurate. So it would have been interesting to see if you’d actually been ok. It’s good you have electrical background but that’s a very small part of what can be wrong with a Chinese machine tool. There’s a reason why we refer to them as “kits”

 

[markba633csi]

Grizzly used to make a decent combo machine- one of our members has one- but I looked at the current options and apparently
it has been discontinued. Don't remember the model #. All the current models are not as good and overpriced, IMO

The bed of a lathe just isn't a suitable platform for milling on, and the cross slide area is usually small. That, plus the hassle of having
to break down setups all the time between the two functions just makes for a very frustrating experience with combo machines.

 

[IAmJohnny5]

Well guys, I'm back at it looking at another machine. This time I think everyone will have a better opinion of this one. Since I am more actively looking for a lathe (and with everyone's advice) I decided to go way back to older listings in search of something that may have slipped through the cracks and found this https://offerup.com/item/detail/fb3ffb0b-16b5-3ba4-bf42-9367bde1fd10, a Logan 200.

It comes with all the gears tools to get started, the guy said he used it very little and the previous owner used it solely for plastic. The only issues are that it has been sitting in a fabrication shop idle for a while and is pretty grimy, nothing worrying though, and the motor currently has no support so it is putting a lot of torsion stress on the rest of the machine. A wood support should sort it out. Oh yeah, and a loose belt, but that's easy. We plugged it in and started it up without issue. The owner also said the listing hadn't been updated by his wife and the price had gone from $1800 to $1500 already.

Well, is this a little bit better than the Bolton @matthewsx ?

 

[C-Bag]

I like Logan but this would be a tough one for me because no quick change gear box. It looks like it has a stack of change gears, but there’s weird stuff mixed in. Like in the second pic the red-ish pieces are from 9x20 lathe like mine. It also looks like a couple of other pieces from a 9x20 mixed in there. It makes it really hard when they have stuff all piled up in a jumble. i also don’t like that it looks like he had the cover plate on the head wired down. Lifting that cover is a clutch /belt release for changing speeds. Is the mechanism messed up? I’d also take a good look at the ways, I don’t see much oil. Bad sign IMHO.