Is this a good lathe to start with?

John Ridley said:
I have a history of forgetting things when I'm on site.
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I think many of us fall victim to this syndrome. When there in person, ask the guy for 15-20 minutes to check it over uninterrupted. Take a few deep breaths, and methodically go through your list. Good luck with the lathe purchase. Hope it all works out. Mike
 
I would buy it and and use it for awhile. If you don't like it I bet you can sell it for what you paid.
I live in Central Michigan.
Joe
 
I would avoid such offerings and watch for a well cared for and clean machine, being sold with a comprehensive set of tooling, and in demonstrably good operating condition.
 
ezduzit said:
I would avoid such offerings and watch for a well cared for and clean machine, being sold with a comprehensive set of tooling, and in demonstrably good operating condition.
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I don't have that kind of money. This machine well cared for with a lot of tooling would go for probably $3000 or more around here. I like restoring things so I think this will be a fun project assuming it's in basically sound shape (no broken gears etc). I've watched a few videos and am convinced that the Rockwell is probably a much sturdier lathe than an equivalent SB or Logan.
 
It’s my opinion, barring any real problems that you can discover upon inspection, that you’ve found a very good starter machine in the range of “probably not going to make clocks and watches” to “not going to work on farm machinery.” There’s a lot of work between those two.
 
Just to follow up on this thread, I did wind up buying the lathe. I'm about 3/4 of the way through restoring it, which has been a fantastically fun project. The machine is in very good shape mechanically, but had been very poorly lubricated. The only wear I noticed that could be attributed to this was on the spur gear inside the apron that the worm drive engages with - the oil reservoir seems to have NEVER been filled. It's still not horrible and will probably never actually wear out in my use but it is clearly a bit more worn than it should be given the state of the rest of the machine.

All the other oil and grease were dried as well so things were free but kind of gummy. I've been spending many fun days with kerosene and a toothbrush. I'm also stripping the horrible green paint and painting it back to machine grey. I picked up a VFD and just got that wired last night, also got to the point where I took the headstock off last night and cleaned it - the back gears were really gummed up with old grease but once clean they look great. The AXA tool post that came with it has the wrong foot for the compound so it was clearly never actually installed on this machine, but I have an M14 tap coming so I can jump on the mill and make a new foot quickly. Also there's a carriage stop missing but that's probably 30 minutes to make one it's simple enough.
Having a great time bringing this thing back into operation.

here's a photo album:
https://ibb.co/album/k9T7va
 
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Looks great! Nice job on the clean-up, looks like you ended up with a real champ.

-frank
 
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