South Bend Turret Lathe 2CW 2Hx6 FOR Sale Bundle

Hi All,

I am selling a South Bend Turret Lathe (SN# 141938) as a bundle with a ton of tooling and accessories. This is from my dad's workshop and we need to sell it as a bundle, not enough time nor knowledge to part out. Please check out the Ebay posting:

South Bend Turret lathe 2-CW 2Hx6 Bundle | eBay

Good luck with that price,Be suprized if you even get a bid.

Honestly I do not know what to price it at for the lathe and all the tooling and accessories. I was working with a seller of these machines however I have not heard from them in some time and really need to move this item. I am not a machinist and really need it gone. I was able to find out some of tooling names and prices but again I am lost at pricing this stuff. I have 2 .pdf's with images of some of the tooling if interested, I can email them to you since I cannot upload them here. Any help is appreciated! Someone at Grizzly.com pointed me to this site when I was ordering the S/N certificate.

A lot of the stuff in your eBay listing photos don't have anything to do with that machine. There's a bunch of cutters for a horizontal mill, a set of transfer punches, a bunch of large taper reamers intended for use with a hand wrench (rather than a lathe), some gear hobs, what looks like a shop-made indexer, a tapping head that works on a drill press (although I suppose it could be chucked on the lathe)...

South Bends are popular and generally easy to move. Also Texas prices for such machines are higher than other areas. Those are the two pluses. And its a WW2 machine, additional plus.

Down sides, Its a turret lathe, so less popular than an engine lathe or one with a taper attachment. I have this exact lathe but restored, and I truly like it, its just not as popular. Next problem the turret tail stock is missing pieces. There's no adapters in turret head for any tools, and all the adjusting screws, 6 of them, are missing from the end of tail stock. In the pics, compare the turret tail stock to yours, you'll see the missing stuff:



With mine having a decent restore done, and quite a bit of tooling and options I'd probably have to sell for $3000 if I wanted to move it reasonably quick, maybe $3500 if I hold out because of tooling. But I might have to sell tooling separate to get it moved. And thats in TX, might be harder in other areas.

On yours, there is a gear under the tool post being used as a spacer to raise tool post, this would look bad to anyone who knows:



The worst is the motor base has several breaks in it, some have heavy welds, or so it appears. I'd be super unhappy with that as a buyer. In general someone would buy this for parts, or as a long project.



Even with Texas prices higher, I'd guess you might get $1500 if you hold your ground, but I would not expect it to move it fast.

Nice getting the serial card:

Thank you for taking the time to look over the post, it led me to some good google searches

Thank you very much! I actually watched all your resto videos you have on your turret lathe. They had so much great information.

I did find the 6 adjusting screws in a bin, there are six going through a cylinder shape ring.

I think I can take that gear off the tool post.

Do you think eBay is the best place to sell the lathe and all the items as a bundle? Do you know of a better place?

Thank you again for taking the time to post.

The lathe at 2600 to 2800 lbs make shipping out of state cost prohibive, though not impossible. Just a tougher sell to out of state.

The items unrelated to lathe i would sell individual or as a package on ebay. This forum also also has a "tooling wanted/for sale section, its outside this South Bend section. Maybe someone can link it, im on my phone atm. But as a new user here, trust might be an issue selling here.

But selling the tools separate will increase your sale total.

Locally craigslist or Facebook marketplace for lathe by itself.

Good eye on the broken base Tex.

Yeah I agree completely with texas gunsmith, that lathe is a 1000-1500$ lathe TOPS, and that’s really pushing the TOP of the price envelope.

The tool post onto of that gear is indeed a bad sign along with the shattered base = abused machine.

One thing Tex didn’t mention was the fact you DONT have a compound on the saddle, that’s a BIGGG NO NO on the used hobby market, it’s typical of a turret lathe to not have a compound but it still greatly kills the resale/usability.

The tooling is so random, as said a lot of that tooling can’t even be used for the machine, used gear hobs don’t hold much value except to those who really want and CAN use them.

I see you used a box truck to move it so i assume you paid movers to move and store it, if that’s the case your Probably already UPSIDE down on your “profits”.

It’s also an older lathe so it doesn’t have a hardened bed so the wear should be a problem as well.

Good luck with it! I hope someone gets some use of it, after all they haven’t built a new one in about 50 years.

I noticed an inch-metric dial in the next to last photo, that had to come from somewhere - maybe there are parts and pieces of a compound around?
I might be interested in some of the milling cutters if you decide to sell separately. What size is the hole through them?

Rudd said:

I noticed an inch-metric dial in the next to last photo, that had to come from somewhere - maybe there are parts and pieces of a compound around?
I might be interested in some of the milling cutters if you decide to sell separately. What size is the hole through them?

Click to expand...

I need to get back out there and take some more photos. I will get the sizes and get back to you.

Thank you for your interest.

Hey noob85, out of curiosity how much do YOU think that lathe is worth?