Been doing a lot of lurking here and elsewhere on the interwebs for the past few months while looking to add a lathe to my shop. For the past 15 years, I've used an old SA Potter lathe that was my grandfathers. Was really only up to cutting aluminum (at least with my very limited skills), and while I'll miss it's very vintage charm, I passed it along via Craigslist to someone that was specifically looking for something from that era.
My goal was to pickup something in the 8-10" swing range, with at least 16" between centers. After searching for a month or two on Craigslist, nothing seemed to be coming up that fit the bill The stuff that was 'interesting' was either in very poor condition, or super expensive. I eventually settled on just picking up a new import 10x22 from Precision Matthews for ~$2400. More than I really wanted to spend, but the reviews here and elsewhere seemed to be pretty good, and they come well-equipped.
Literally the night before I planned to drive out there (they are western PA, and I'm in eastern PA), I hit craigslist one more time and saw a Boxford 10x20 listed with a pic that looked like it had been taken with a potato. Was only 15 mins from my house, so I headed out the next morning and we settled on $550. I faced a piece of scrap cold-rolled on it, tested the feeds, both the low and high speed ranges and everything seemed ok. That said, it was DIRTY AS ALL HECK, and I am NOT qualified to assess the real condition. It looked a bit beat on in places, but wasn't really rusty anywhere on the lathe itself, and included an old QC tool post, bunch of holders, another older toolpost with some vintage tooling, and 2 additional 8" chucks that DID NOT fit, he was just throwing them in. Chuck on the machine was a Yuasa 3-jaw, and is the only chuck I have for it that fits (L00). I felt at that price, I could probably recoup what I was spending if I decided not to keep it.
So that was a week ago, and I'm feeling like my next steps are to clean this thing all up, fix the issues I'm seeing with it, and maybe even paint it. Is it worth it?
Shot a quick vid showing the machine and stepping through some of what I see as pros and cons:
YouTube
Also posted a bunch of pics in as-is (albeit now partly disassembled condition) here:
As Purchased
What do you guys think? I don't mind putting in the work to restore it. I just don't want to put a bunch of time/money into something that will never make good parts. My definition of "good parts" is accurate parts for the type of repair and project work one would do in their home shop, not parts for NASA with a 1/10th of a thou accuracy over 4' :P
It's 3-phase 1.5hp, so I'd be running it from a VFD on 240v split-phase.
Thanks in advance for reading this far, and hopefully checking out the vid.
-Rich H.
My goal was to pickup something in the 8-10" swing range, with at least 16" between centers. After searching for a month or two on Craigslist, nothing seemed to be coming up that fit the bill The stuff that was 'interesting' was either in very poor condition, or super expensive. I eventually settled on just picking up a new import 10x22 from Precision Matthews for ~$2400. More than I really wanted to spend, but the reviews here and elsewhere seemed to be pretty good, and they come well-equipped.
Literally the night before I planned to drive out there (they are western PA, and I'm in eastern PA), I hit craigslist one more time and saw a Boxford 10x20 listed with a pic that looked like it had been taken with a potato. Was only 15 mins from my house, so I headed out the next morning and we settled on $550. I faced a piece of scrap cold-rolled on it, tested the feeds, both the low and high speed ranges and everything seemed ok. That said, it was DIRTY AS ALL HECK, and I am NOT qualified to assess the real condition. It looked a bit beat on in places, but wasn't really rusty anywhere on the lathe itself, and included an old QC tool post, bunch of holders, another older toolpost with some vintage tooling, and 2 additional 8" chucks that DID NOT fit, he was just throwing them in. Chuck on the machine was a Yuasa 3-jaw, and is the only chuck I have for it that fits (L00). I felt at that price, I could probably recoup what I was spending if I decided not to keep it.
So that was a week ago, and I'm feeling like my next steps are to clean this thing all up, fix the issues I'm seeing with it, and maybe even paint it. Is it worth it?
Shot a quick vid showing the machine and stepping through some of what I see as pros and cons:
YouTube
Also posted a bunch of pics in as-is (albeit now partly disassembled condition) here:
As Purchased
What do you guys think? I don't mind putting in the work to restore it. I just don't want to put a bunch of time/money into something that will never make good parts. My definition of "good parts" is accurate parts for the type of repair and project work one would do in their home shop, not parts for NASA with a 1/10th of a thou accuracy over 4' :P
It's 3-phase 1.5hp, so I'd be running it from a VFD on 240v split-phase.
Thanks in advance for reading this far, and hopefully checking out the vid.
-Rich H.