开云体育

Kelvin:

If you spend a couple of hours roaming the right places on the net, you can
get a good picture of things quickly. Here's are some suggestions for you
(others on this group will probably also chime in. This group has many
helpful folks). One thing you should do is have a fairly clear idea of what
you want to do so you don't purchase too much or too little (which is
possibly worse).

www.minilathe.com is THE place with a lot of information and links about the
small Sieg Chinese minilathes. Sieg machines are sold under many brands as
you will see on this site. The consensus of this group seems to be that
Homier is the best value. Homier's site is www.homier.com .

www.littlemachineshop.com is another "must see" site selling tooling,
accessories, and parts for these things. It's loaded with all sorts of
information.

www.sherline.com is Sherline's site. These are American made lathes that
are smaller than the 7x10/7x12/7x14 Chinese lathes but have arguably better
quality. These are sold by many places. They are priced fairly, but you
will likely pay more than for the Chinese lathes.

If something as small as a Sherline is OK, you might consider an older
Unimat lathe. These first came out in the 60's and really popularized the
idea of small lathes. These are always being sold on ebay. Really nice
ones with lots of tooling can go for big bucks as a collector item, but
completely usable ones with a little rust and scraped paint often go for
bargain prices. Those early Unimats are not as strong as the Sherline, but
many have done wonders with them. I couldn't recommend the newer Unimat
products - they have become just too hobby-like.

You can search on ebay for "minilathe", "sherline", "unimat" and even "small
lathes" and see a lot small lathes and accessories.

Note that the tooling you will need (chucks, fancier toolposts, milling
attachments, etc) is about the same for anything and tooling can represent a
significant cost if you want a lot of doodads. It's worth getting an idea
of everything that will be needed for what you want to do, and know what
comes supplied with the lathe, so you don't get surprised later.

Good luck, and enjoy!

Chuck K.