Diy lathe or cheap ancient lathe

Check carefully for broken gear teeth- that's about the best piece of advice I can give, and it's something that would be hard to fix
Everything else is just normal wear which you can accommodate
Mark
ps put aside the idea of building your own lathe
 
Nogoingback said:
In your post you indicate that you are an absolute novice to machine work, yet you have the knowledge and capability to do the construction
and precision work yourself. Not questioning your skills, but it's a bit difficult to assess your abilities based on this post. Building a decent lathe
from scratch is a pretty significant task. I'd go with the Britannia: you'll learn a lot from getting it back in shape and using it, and you can always
build a lathe later if you choose to. Here's some information on Britannia's:

http://www.lathes.co.uk/britannia/
Click to expand...
I have experience with alot of hand fabrication, never had the proper machinery though so I am confident in my skills and patients to achieve a level to which I could build the lathe to start making its own parts.
 
If you can find yourself a basket case lathe, it is much easier than starting from scratch. I hear of a lot of people getting stuck on casting the Gingery lathe bed and aligning the ways so the saddle does not bind. If you have a bed and saddle that move smoothly, you are ahead of the game. I started trying to build my own machine tools, and I have a fully stocked blacksmith shop. It didn't work out so well. First, these weren't quite the correct tools, and second, it's a lot of work.
 
Trying to build a lathe without a lathe is like trying to produce eggs with no chickens....:dejected:
 
Haha, yea i was considering keeping it absolute basic as possible to start and when i get to a point of turning, make it more and more 'complex' and refined
 
But I'm driving through in the morning to go fetch the colchester, its about a 4 hour drive to go get it
 
If that lathe even works a little bit, you will find out that it can start making its own parts pretty quickly. When I started out, the little lathe I got was not quite at this stage. It is now there. And, it was able to make parts for the basket case South Bend that I just got. The South Bend is just now at the point that it can start making its own parts. Eventually, it will be at the point that it can do this for another machine (another basket case).

A friend of mine told me that I think too much like a blacksmith. He said that it doesn't work that way for machine tools. I don't see much on the Internet saying he's wrong, but the bootstrap method seems to be working. And, my from scratch efforts have all failed.
 
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