Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Buying a lathe

I do custom wildcats and need to put a lathe in my shop instead of farming out the rifle work because of the uncertain quality and speed of the job.

Are there brands of lathes I should stay away from and what price should I expect to pay? 40" between centers is my target at around $7K - any advice appreciated.

Try the big johnson lathe company. You can drill, ream, hog out a piece of metal lickedy split with a big johnson lathe.

What in the world is a big johnson lathe? I thought I knew of most of them.
Butch

I purchased a Jet 14x40 and it works very well for me, the cost was around 7,000 or 8,000 just can't remember exact price.

I'm a big fan of the Grizzly lathes. My first Grizzly was a 13x40 that cost about $3500. Did excellent work but I wanted their toolroom model so I sold it and traded up. I could have stayed with the first lathe and been happy but......

My partner in the business, Chris, a master tool and die maker says the Grizzly toolroom lathe is as fine a lathe as he's ever used. They cost ~$6K when I bought mine but they're closer to $8K now.

I wanted the Grizzly but could get the Gunsmith Model except in a Three Phase and it wasn't worth the cost to me to have a three phase system installed, so went with Jet 14x40 single phase.

You can pick up a used Okuma for about that price......

a J.E.T. or Enco would probably do you good as long as you are not doing high volume work.... But only buy them new......

Here is a couple of links for you....


Enco

MSC industrial supply

He is poking fun at his forum name.


I agree that the Grizzly toolroom lathes are quite nice. If you are going to buy a lathe to do gunsmithing on, don't buy a single phase lathe. A 3-phase is so much better that it really doesn't warrant argument.

$7K will buy you a really nice used lathe- Leblond, Colchester, Nardini, Victor to name a few.

I would certainly consider the nice Grizzlys but I would never spend $7K on a Jet- too much money for little support in parts and stability.

i bought a jet 13-36 belt drive lathe about 20 years ago, still works. all depreciated out and any money i make is all gravy now. BEA175's jet 14x40 looks very neat.

A variable Frequency drive is an inexpensive way to get your 3 phase and it will make your machine variable speed.
Butch

I wouldn't let the title 'gunsmith' be the deal breaker for me. The lathe does not have a clue what it's being used for.
One item I would really want is a foot brake. The Grizzly lathes that have a foot brake use a disc brake, not a metal band and it will stop the lathe!!

As far as being 3 phase I solved that problem with a small static phase converter. So what if you only have 75% power, you ain't making axles for a John Deere skidder. I've never been under powered with my mill or my lathe by running the static phase converter.

I just build rifles for myself and the single phase works great for my use and i actually like the Jet. The foot brake works great on the Jet. I looked at the phase converter but then decided the Single Phase was all i really needed.

Bea, that's a very nice lathe you have. I've always been a mori man myself. That's probably what I'll buy one of these days. Something like the 17x50 ms1250 but its heavy and big but hey I'll be able to do just about anything I need to with it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE1YtEKXL1A

The video is funny, the guy doesn't turn the chuck to engage the gears wtf.....

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with a Jet lathe- just that they don't own a factory and source their stuff wherever. Because they really don't have their own facility, parts can be problematic. Lathes change all the time and parts too.

I have a friend that couldn't get the parts he needed for his Jet Lathe so he got rid of it. I ran into the same thing for my Frejoth. I couldn't get parts for my tail stock and had to make them. It was a real pain. At least with Grizzly, the parts are only a phone call away.

A 3-phase lathe lets you reverse it while going forward etc. Not so with a single phase. I also found funny vibrations with single phase that I didn't see after converting. Many have had this same experience.

Don't let the absence of three phase be the deciding factor in which lathe you buy. There are several ways to create three phase from single phase.

1) The static converter such as sold by Phaseamatic

2) A rotary phase converter which consists of a static phase converter to start a three phase idler motor which will create three phase. This is what I use in my shop as I set up before variable frequency drives were readily available and reliable.

3) Variable frequency drives.

Were I making the decision today I would use the VFD.

I tried 2 of them and burned them both up. If I ever try another I will have to have someone who understands this stuff better set it up. I used a 7.5 HP RPC.

Thanks for all the help on this topic, very informative.

The Variable Frequency Drive sounds like the way to go - any ideas on the cost?

Also, I have looked at the Grizzly Gunsmith model locally - what is the advantage of other models over that?

I have a precision matthews 14x40 with built in freq drive, it is 100% variable speed on the fly. I like the smoothness of a 3 phase rig. I would look for a tight used lathe and use the rest for tooling. You can wrap up a ton in tooling. I paid 4200 for my lathe used but still under warranty and it had a bunch of tooling and a dro. I sold my atlas and hardinge and I really don't have any regrets yet. It is a tight, repeatable rig.

Fwiw, my pm lathe has a 2" spindle bore and is a copy of the colchester like most others. Look for weight.....mass equals accuracy.

I am on my 4th lathe, a Precision Matthews 12x36 [parts often interchangeable with other Chinese brands] with DRO and foot brake. I have had it a year, have built some tooling for it, and have ~ $4k into it.
http://www.machinetoolonline.com/PM1236.html

Full sized American lathes for gunsmithing cost more than a new car 50 years ago, and they do today. We are just lucky we can get these crummy Chinese lathes for 10% of that price.

While it may be fun to buy an old American lathe and rebuild it, that project has a life of it's own, and I am not doing gunsmithing while I am doing that.

I only cut threads and chamber ~ 4 rifles per year, all for personal consumption, so $4k is all I am going to spend on a lathe.