smashing lathe

I'm inclined to agree with the reader's comment on the last page"

"Do you sleep in a cave and kill your food with a club?"

It does seem rather wasteful. I'm sure the lathe could have been fixed and used.

Chris

I think the lathe was to old to try to save. The only reason to save it would have been if you didn't have another one.

Richard W.

I saw a larger, older lathe and drilling machine go for only $30 or so at an auction. They were worn out and had no automatic feeds, the guy who bought them was heading straight for the scrap yard 80 miles away. It's seemed a shame, but recycling old metal is what we all do in one way or another.

About 20 years ago I was the Mack Truck auction, big guy in bib overalls would buy all the machines nobody wanted at the minimum bid of $25, he got quite a few drill presses, a few vert mills and a bunch of horz mills IIRC. I made him out to be a scrap dealer.

Thank You, Randy

Remove 333 from email address to reply.

They like cast iron.

Age doesn't really mean a lot. Whether it was originally a good machine and whether it has been well maintained mean a lot more. But in this case we don't know.

I'd always rather have a good used machine than a new and crappy Chinese or Indian one.

Chris

You're right age doesn't mean a thing if it's in good shape. Although old machines in good shape are few and far between. I bought a South Bend lathe from an estate. It was built in 1957 still had the factory scraping on the ways. Had the quick change gear box and all the goodies. It was so light I would have traded it straight across for a bigger import lathe. A 12" import lathe is larger and more rigid that the 10" SB lathe. Actually I have it a lot better than that now with my 16" Pratt & Whitney. I could use a higher spindle speed than the 1,000 RPM it has. On my list is to get the high speed option of 1500 RPM. The factory offered 1000 or 1500 RPM on the 16C as an option. The only difference was pulley diameter and the speed chart.

I did run across an early Nebel lathe that had a thread on chuck and a swing of around 20". The thing was it's top speed was awful slow for a gear head. The top speed was 400 RPM. So it would have been a poor choice if you could only have 1 lathe. If you had room for 2 lathes it would have been nice to have for big stuff, the low speed wouldn't have been a problem.

It depends. There are good imports. The "Sharp" lathes from Taiwan are great. But there's a lot of crap too, often made by one company and sold under several different brand names. Not good enough to be worth selling under a single name to build up a following. I think that the smaller the machine tool is, the more crappy choices you have. But equally, there are old lathes that were bad.

By and large, I think the crap comes from China and India. Taiwan makes some pretty good stuff today. Those Paladin crimp tools I mentioned in another thread are also Taiwanese. But you can't be sure of a product's quality based on the location of the manufacturer. That doesn't work any longer, if it ever did. Price is a better indicator.

Best wishes,

Chris

Which 10" was it? The 10L is the heavier model, the other one is really a 9" upsized.

I don't remember which 10" it was. Looked like a 9" some else I knew had. It's been a long time since I owned it. I have been married 28 years and I sold it several years before I got married.

Richard W.