The above comments are all excellent. Your question is good, but difficult to answer. It sounds like you have been into making, fixing, building for quite a few years. I am betting that you already have lots of tools that will be useful in machining. You probably already have a selection of drill bits, maybe some taps & dies, no doubt wrenches and other basic tools. Also of importance is what you want to do with the machine? For example, if you want to be making custom bolting, you need to get set up for threading. On the other hand, I know of home machinists who have never threaded with their lathes. What tooling you acquire, depends on what you want to do with the lathe. Okay, another consideration is the opportunities you have available to you. If you happen across some good used items that will work for you, even if it is not the next item on the list - buy it because it will save you money in the long run.
HSS is fine. Brazed carbide is fine, but carbide is very brittle and you need a good way to grind it. When you do start to use brazed carbide tooling, get a silicon carbide (green) wheel - it grinds pretty slow, so don't get too fine a wheel.
Review previous posts - also, drill chuck, selection of center drills, live center, one good sized drill bit (say 1" - for starting a hole that you will bore). You need a way to cut material to length. You don't need to get a parting tool right away. If you have some sort of a saw, you can take the piece out of the lathe - cut it to length and face the end (I did not have a parting tool for the first couple years).
Perhaps it has just been my projects, but two area I found myself getting into was: boring tools and measuring tools. It seemed I soon had quite a selection of boring tools and methods to hold the boring bars. The measuring tools are necessary in the endless "pursuit of precision". You need basic ID & OD measuring tools in the sizes for the jobs you will be doing.
Let us know how you make out.
Regards, David
David,
Thank you. You're right: I've been fixing, making, and building things all my life. Started with erector sets, Lincoln logs, and Legos as a kid. Watched my grandfathers and father intently as a kid, always helped Dad on every project. Was a mechanic in the Army who learned sometimes, you may not have the exact tool, equipment, or material you might want or need, but still had to get the mission accomplished. Work with computers, networks, etc in my paying job these days, but on the farm, still build or fix most of whatever we need, most of the time. I hate paying people to do things I know how to do, which is a pool of knowledge I've tried to expand my whole life. Tend to learn new things as needed, necessity being the mother of invention, and persistence being its father. My hobbies help, though my wife could strangle me at times. I've always been in the business of figuring out how to make things work, one way or the other. So yes, I have all kinds of tools, seldom a "full set" of anything, because I've tended to buy what I've needed when I needed it. Have the 12yo Miller Bobcat 250, rely on that a ton on the farm. Can weld up most things I need, heck, built the barn with that, from a pile of pipe and purlin. Will use the heck out of it for enclosing the workshop too. Have a big synchro wave welder I got for a good price several years back, haven't used it as much, though that will change soon.
I have a variety of drill bits, mostly all under 1/2, with a few exceptions, a ton of small taps under 3/8 or 10mm I use for a lot of stuff, primarily r/c plane stuff, though I have a few larger for other things here and there on the farm.
One of the projects/inventions I'm working on now requires a milling machine, which I don't have. Of course, that hasn't stopped me entirely because I've used an old radial drill press as a sort of primitive mill with one of those small X-y tables you can buy. Hard to be precise with that, but I putter along.
So yes, I've made do... Part of acquiring the lathe is about the fact that for some things, cobbled-together solutions really won't stand up. If I had a dollar for every time I've muttered "I wish I had a lathe" over the last 25 years as I worked on this or that, I'd have bought a big new one a decade ago with all the bells and whistles. Of course, like many things I've acquired over time, the lathe falls into that category of: "but I'll have to fix it first..." That never stopped me.
The best thing about having the father and grandfathers I was so fortunate to have was the idea they instilled in me, probably from the very start: Use your mind and figure it out. Don't have a tool? MAKE a tool. Don't have the equipment? What do you have and how can it be used in a pinch? I'm pretty certain my Dad's father saw the world as forces acting in a geometric space. There wasn't much he couldn't figure out.
So yes, I've got some tools, probably a few that would seem out of place until you understand how I've used them.
But that's half the fun... One of the things my Frau doesn't understand is when I climb in bed, I'll turn the TV to something instructive, or educational in a broader sense. I don't know how many of you guys ever watch Suburban Tool or OxToolCo on YouTube, but I get a kick out of those kinds of things. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes but I like seeing how things are done. Watched a short video of 4gsr grinding ways on a L&S lathe that was really spiffy. I love watching people solve real world problems. It's one of the reasons I lurked here a long time, periodically, as it's interesting to me how others approach problems. You guys here rock.
Thanks!
Mark
About $1.80 each in packs of 10. They actually hold up well, and if you destroy one it's not catastrophic. And I keep an assortment of HSS bits around for those times carbide just won't do or I need that special profile.
