Buying a lathe, what tooling should I get/avoid?

Keep an eye on your local craigslist for a horizontal bandsaw. You will need to cut stock and that will be useful. If you have a harbor freight nearby their small horizontal bandsaw is decent

Do some searching in your town for places to buy stock. Might take a few phone calls or post your location here for someone who might know and tell you. Want a place that sells small amounts to a hobiest. It is nice to have a place to go browse stock and have some cut for you. Likely way less expensive and no shipping than online ordering.
 
Good idea on locating stock. I'm in Herriman, Utah. It's near Salt Lake. If anyone knows of any hobbyist friendly shops in the area willing to sell small bits to practice on, please let me know. I know we have a couple vendors around, they generally want to sell full sticks though. Still, might be cheaper than paying shipping.

Nice to know that the HF bandsaw is a decent machine. I was looking at it. I see some pop up from time to time on the local classifieds as well. It's on my todo list. Right now I have an abrasive chop saw, it works alright, but does heat the metal a fair bit.
 
Might try diesel to clean off the packing grease. I use diesel as a Universal solvent all the time on machine tools with good results. Don't know what protective oil the factory puts on new machines, as never been lucky enuf to have one!

I would check your Manual for proper set up and 'breakin' instructions. Doesn't make sense to me to change the oil if it's never been run. One thing for sure, you should probably level the lathe once you get the machine sitting where you want it, on your shop floor. You will need to take the twist out of the bed to hold consistent cuts along the work. Check out the other threads on leveling. There are some very interesting stories out there.

Have fun with your new machine!

Glenn
 
dlane said:
What kinda dead trees,
Click to expand...

The dead kind... :)

My current thinking is 2x4 and maybe some 4x4. Based on the designs people use for large aquariums. I figure it can hold 2000lbs of water, so it can likely hold the 600lb lathe. Topped with 3/4 ply, maybe laminated with a second layer. A little oversized to give room for tools, workpieces, a vise, etc..

Thanks Glenn. I'm planning to do level and align everything before doing any work on it. I'm going over leveling threads and the manual to get a good idea how to do it right. Fresh oil is mostly just part of the cleaning. Some people have mentioned finding interesting stuff in the gearbox on Chinese machines. Could be shipping, QC, whatever.. Seems like cheap insurance to rinse anything like that out. May not be anything to worry about, but better safe than sorry.
 
Regarding buying small amounts of metal for the hobbyist. Our local metal recycling guy has quite a selection of raw materials. They don't mind cutting off what ever I want and they will even let me look through the scrap that has been brought in for cut offs etc, and they will sell it to me at scrap prices. They separate all the types of metals, so I am often able to get nice short chunks of brass and aluminum.

David
 
It's official, the 1127 lathe has been ordered. Backordered, but they expect to get more soon. Let the games begin!
 
So, I'm looking at oils. I am leaning toward Mobil DTE Heavy Medium (ISO 68) for the gearbox.

I found a good price on Vactra 4, they recommend it for the ways on large machines. Would it be a good idea on this lathe or am I better off picking something else? My thought for it was for the ways and oil fittings. Seems a lot of people like Vactra 2, which is the same viscosity at the DTE I'm already buying. Should I use that?
 
Vactra #2 is the usual choice for smaller lathes. #4 is usually for bigger machines, depending.
 
Sure. I guess my question is, does it cause problems for a smaller machine? It's much higher viscosity, but that seems like it might be a good thing if it's not turning into a solid or something.. Probably harder to pump into the ports... I'll probably just look for the #2, it just got me thinking.
 
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