I think I missed a good one

Don't let the color of the machine fool ya, or the name on the tag, or what they are new! That is such a bogus metric as the machine you're looking at is most certainly NOT new. And all of those machines are made in the same factory in China for all the different distributors. From my personal experience the 9x20 can be a capable machine if you test and repair as needed. It's a good machine to learn all the stuff that goes into using, repairing and maintaining a hobby lathe. And parts are available and there's TONS of info on modding them. But $900 with no tooling is way to much. For $600 my HF 9x20 came with 5"jaw, 6 1/4" 4 jaw, 3" 3jaw, AXA QCTP and 4 tool holders along with HSS bits, steady, follower and other stuff. No stand like the one in your pic but IMHO it's not worth that much. YMMV, hang in there and keep an eye out.
 
For your reference I paid $1100 for my Enco 110-2033 (12x36") lathe. This was in Cleveland, OH in 2018. It is a '94 and only came with a 3 jaw chuck. Very dirty but probably never really used from the look of it. I felt that I got a very reasonable deal.
 
Shopping for used machinery:

Rule 1: You are going to miss several "Deals of a life time".
Rule 2: Something better WILL come along, you just have to be alert and be ready to jump on a great deal when you find it.
Rule 3: Missing the "Deal of a lifetime" is when you learn what to jump on and what to let pass.
Rule 4: The "Deal of a lifetime" isn't really a deal if you won't get good use out of the machine. (This is a personal note for myself as there a 3 current great deals that I would love to own but I really need to make more use of the excellent machines I have before aquiring more).
 
MikeInOr said:
Shopping for used machinery:

Rule 1: You are going to miss several "Deals of a life time".
Rule 2: Something better WILL come along, you just have to be alert and be ready to jump on a great deal when you find it.
Rule 3: Missing the "Deal of a lifetime" is when you learn what to jump on and what to let pass.
Rule 4: The "Deal of a lifetime" isn't really a deal if you won't get good use out of the machine. (This is a personal note for myself as there a 3 current great deals that I would love to own but I really need to make more use of the excellent machines I have before aquiring more).
Click to expand...

yeah I totally agree with this , you have to miss some deals and keep looking to build that determination and understanding of what you want and what your willing to do to get it ... when I started looking I missed a gentleman selling his atlas mill , shaper and an admittedly crappy (109) lathe for like 200 a piece ... I missed it by minutes and it went to some guy who already had plenty of machines colchester and a Bridgeport and possibly a Logan shaper he told me about ( the reason I know this is because he then listed the 109 lathe for sale and I asked him if he had nabbed the machines) I passed because the machines I wanted were the mill and abetter lathe , I now learned to swoon over a shaper (days before I had not even known what one was ) determines I kept looking and kept missing deals , finally a great little atlas 618 popped up near me and I asked here for advice and I got a lot of it ... I went to look at it and couldn’t get the guy to agree on my price , the one which I had been advised was the fair price by the good people on these forums ... he never budged and it’s now in someone else’s hands (I offered 350 he wouldn’t go below 400 ... so it’s still up for debate who should be ashamed for not moving 50 bucks :p ) and from then I sat machineless for almost 2 years still wanting but life catches up sometimes and you can’t always be ready (being a college student really really does that to ya which also explains why I need to find machines for basically pocket lint money) ... I’m sure I missed great deals in this time but I can’t think about that or it will tear at me , however when I started looking again
I saw a very odd bench top vertical mill posted ... no idea what it was but he said make an offer I thought about it and asked questions of which his only real answers were I have no idea what make it is or really what tooling it takes .. I thought well it’s at least worth one of those nice XY tables so I figured 200 went up saw the machine the guy asked for $150 so I took it ... I have a thread in the antique machines area about this thing if you want to see pictures of this amalgamation ... needless to say it’s more interesting to me than useful for a newcomer and that was my big lesson ... it basically seemed like a converted jig boring machine with a laughable z travel by quill only and weird old fashion tooling , so I re-set out on my mission knowing more about what I really wanted and well I recently ended up with a very nice machine for a great price and it only occurred to me after that it had to be this machine it had to be now and I had finally learned to know exactly what I wanted and exactly how much I was willing to pay for it
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top