Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing cheapest way to turn threads

What is the cheapest lathe that will thread a barrel? I'm looking for cutting the action threads, not the crown or turning the whole barrel. I don't mind a little hand work like cutting and crowning, and hand finishing a roughed chamber.

you might be able to do it for less but its hard to beat this one. http://www.grizzly.com/products/g4003g

I would have said a long bed 9" South Bend but after seeing a couple on eBay go over $3K, I don't think so anymore! One of those was local, the guy offered it to me prior to the auction for $1200 and I thought that too much for a shortbed. Silly me I guess, I didn't need another small lathe. You may as well get something long enough or with a large enough hole in the spindle to do all the jobs that need done - it really doesn't cost that much more and then you're done - 'till you need a mill...

I don't what you have in upstate NY, but if you have high schools or vocational jr. colleges that give machine shop classes you might want to take a class to learn lathe operation. You might also consider taking a week summer class at Mongomery Jr. College, Troy, NC (NRA summer classes) in rifle barreling. Either option will get you some lathe experience and then you'll have a little more knowledge on what type of lathe you would be happy.

There's no way I can currently spend 3 grand. So much for that for now.

Watch for a decent used machine locally - they're out there. I think bullet molds and lathes always bring twice what they're worth on eBay. There's alot you can do building a rifle without a lathe. Maybe a local 'smith will fit a barrel for you and let you watch. That might be the best money spent until you find your lathe. Then start saving for tooling!

I took all the classes I could for years before I ever got a lathe. Finally a guy I had taken several classes with over years with mentioned he had inherited a lathe from a deceased gunsmith, and since he already had a lathe he was comfortable with he offered to sell it to me. It turned out to be a 10" South Bend with all types of extra tooling, some of which the prior gunsmith had made. it turned out he was only about 40 miles from me, and I think I paid $1200 for it. There's lots of used machine dealers in the northeast, you should be able to find a decent used machine for a reasonble price to play on. Remember it aint got to be perfect, you're not building parts to go on the space shuddle.

You all need to be aware that a lot of these are 3-phase which means a costly rewiring job.

A three phase lathe is not difficult set up to run off of single phase. I have done it and sometimes a triple phase lathe can really be bought for the money as many are reluctant to purchase a triple phase machine. All you need is an extra three phase motor to create the third leg by energizing it single phase.It is actually pretty simple and straight forward. You will have 2/3 the power of true triple phase but normally that is not an issue on a small lathe doing light work.I had about 70 dollars in the parts.

Foogle, if I'm understanding you correctly you've described a rotary phase convertor which is the best way of running a three phase machine on single phase power. Your machine will run at full power. There's another way of doing it, AKA static, which uses capacitors to get the motor started and then it runs on just the two legs from the single phase. A static phase convertor limits the motor to 2/3 power and doesn't allow instant reversing.

The best way is to use a VFD which has far more flexibility than a RPC. You can have dynamic braking, soft-starts and infinitely variable speed on the machine. The smaller HP drives are quite inexpensive too.

I have a 7.5 HP RPC and it is somewhat noisy. I would love to upgrade to a VFD.

Yes, you are correct,I stated it wrong. A rotary phase converter will run at full power or close depending on how much voltage sag there is under a load.Some true rotary converters have extra windings on the third leg to correct for sag. . A static phase converter is 2/3 and many not be large enough as was my case. or cost prohibitive in some cases.. My power supply involves both the electric motor and the static phase converter. The point is it does work fine and is pretty straight forward to hook up.

I have a 14 1/2 inch South Bend it came with a 3 Phase motor just replaced it with a single phase motor of approx the same speed and a lttle more hp I did a 1 hp it came with 3/4 hp. I have used it for many years now. It does all that I ask it. The motor I got was reversible Just had to wire the tumbler switch to do the cross over. The lathe is the cheap part the cost is all the tooling. But it sure cuts some pretty threads.

In the long run i'll bet you wish you bought a VFD instead of a sinle phase motor for your lathe. Lathes are 3 phase for a reason. I hope you don't get harmonic problems. Threading for the beginer means back gear and slow speeds. Will your single phase motor run the chuck at less than 105 RPMs?

Good luck
Nat Lambeth

I bought this lathe three years ago. I've finished at least 30 barrels on it in that time without a problem. It's made in Taiwan and while it's not the smoothest running machine around it's all you really need for barrelwork.
http://www.houseoftools.com/product.htm?pid=205418

Keep your eyes open, you may run up on a bargain. My forst lathe was a Southbend 10K that I picked up for 500 bucks with collets, 3 jaw, 4 jaw, taper attachment, micrometer stop and thread dial.

Cheapest way to get what you want done?
-Find a local gunsmith.

2nd cheapest way?
-Call Pac-Nor and some other barrelmakers and ask them to quote you a price on a short-chambered custom barrel, pre-fit to your receiver's measurements. You need to supply them with 2 measurements: the distance from boltface to receiver shoulder, and distance from boltnose to receiver shoulder. Then you can ream the last .1" and set your headspace as you desire.


Buying threading tools, tool bits, all the measurement tools and a lathe; even a used one, is not a "cheap" way to do anything.

Threading on a lathe is fairly easy.

Learning to thread CORRECTLY on a lathe is a difficult and long process, and Correctly is the only acceptable way to thread a barrel.

Cheapest way to get what you want done?
-Find a local gunsmith.

Funny, as that's going to be me. Actually I'm not looking to get into buying a heavy duty lathe. I just wondered about a small lathe.

Hi Corelokt,

I had no idea from your discussion that you were or planned to become a "local gunsmith".

Most barrel work is done through the headstock, where threading, rough chambering, crowning and brake threads are concerned. Unless you are working with featherweight barrel contours, most small lathes do not have the 1.25-1.5" through spindle capacity. Also takes some decent horsepower to make cuts deeper than 1mm so this leaves a lot of small lathes out as well.

Jet makes a lightweight, table top machine that might serve.
You might also think about Shilen pre-fits from Brownells or order your custom barrels contoured and short-chambered.

Expertise with a lathe goes pretty much hand-in-hand with any precision barrel work. With a small hobby lathe you could do a lot of machine work, making small parts, brakes etc; just no real barrel threading or chambering. If you were to build custom rifles ready-made for sale, you would have many options. If you see your niche as a custom gunsmith for hire, then no way that you won't need at least a 9"x36" lathe that can accomodate through headstock work.

I think I would heavily research the availability of all parts, accessories, and barrel blanks before I committed my future to gunsmithing. Waits for barrels are into the 6mo or longer sphere, barrel extensions and other upper parts for all AR rifles are unavailable, not much is readily available unless you stocked it 6mos ago. Maybe you are sitting on $20k of great parts and blanks, but likely you aren't. No matter how much $$ you are willing to commit, it could be a year or more before the market returns to availability conditions like last Summer.

Maybe there's opportunity in there somewhere? I just don't see it for a new gunsmith who doesn't already have a following or customer base.

good luck!