Is The Lathe In This Cl Ad Worth It?

Hey Gearhead,

Great sculpture and video!
I bet you have a few hours in that.

Do you do all the tig welding too?

Having your own lathe will open up a lot for you.
Based on your comments, a small but precision one may be what you need.
Have you considered a NEW Taig, Sieg or similar?

http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=43104&cat=1,330,50260
http://www.harborfreight.com/7-inch-x-10-inch-precision-mini-lathe-93212.html
http://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=4959

For about the same money you could get a new mini lathe and not have to worry about years of wear.
Unless you see yourself needing large capacities in the future.

-brino
 
Thanks for the compliments, brino! Yes, quite a few hours on that particular piece, and I do all the TIG work. It is only on occasion that indeed a machinist to cut a part, but I hope to change that!

I have talked with some other builders, and I've been encouraged to get a larger lathe, the common idea being, "You'll want to leave yourself the option to do bigger stuff down the road." I can see my sculptures growing in scale and size too, so it seems to me it's a pretty safe bet that I'll need a larger lathe at some point.

Thanks for those links in your previous post. I went through and read all of it. Great info!
 
Interesting. The model number on that Craftsman corresponds to a 12" woodworking bandsaw. Although given its age and condition from photos it would not be surprising if someone replaced the motor at some time.
 
Cheeseking said:
Interesting. The model number on that Craftsman corresponds to a 12" woodworking bandsaw. Although given its age and condition from photos it would not be surprising if someone replaced the motor at some time.
Click to expand...
You know, I was wondering about that! I had tried looking it up, and I got nothing related to a lathe. I thought I was somehow doing an incorrect search!
 
Gearhead you should post this over in the atlas lathe forum...Robert (aka wa5cab) will identify this lathe.

David
 
The ad's gone now, but my guess is he probably just measured the diameter of the chuck to come up with the 6".
 
Hey guys, I'm newer to the forum and I also saw that the lathe is gone now. But when I'm checking out lathes on CL I like to do side by side comparisons with this site -

http://www.lathes.co.uk/page21.html

That's a direct link to very large list of lathes, it's nice for referance to see all the features of the CL lathe your looking at, along with being able to do side by side picture comparison, just to make sure it's not missing anything, also to check and see which lathes came with hardened ways and how to tell, which was usually represented by a small plaque under the ways by the tailstock. Anyway I'm not sure if this link is already located on this site somewhere. But I thought this would be a nice place to put it, so guys can get more information about the features of the lathe that they are looking at.
 
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