Lathe recommendations?

[Mike Pickwell]

This is my first post on this forum so please allow me to introduce myself: My name is Mike Pickwell and I'm what you might call a hobbyist frame builder. In the last 18 months or so I've completed two of the well known frame building courses in the U.K. and since then I've produced two frames at home, one for an ex-colleague and one for a family member.

I moved house 12 months ago and I've just had a modest outbuilding/workshop built in my back garden which I'm in the process of fitting out. My annual sales bonus has just been paid in and now that I have the room and the spare cash I'm considering 'biting the bullet' and getting a metal lathe.

I like to hear what words of advice other frame builders have on this topic, what they find useful, what's unnecessary what works and what doesn't.

My workshop space is a modest 3.7m x 3.7m so anything enormous is out of the question. In terms of budget I was hoping to spend under £2,000 (GBP). Beyond usual frame building jobs it would be nice but by no means essential if I could use it for automotive repair jobs such as skimming brake drums etc.

Your recommendations please!

Kind regards, Mike Pickwell

[bambuko]

Mike,
Never buy new one, there is plenty of old iron that will do better job for lot less.
Buy as big as you can - big lathe will do small job, small lathe will struggle with job.
Don't buy one with main spindle threaded for chuck - you are better off with short taper modern spindles (safer running in reverse, easier to fit the chuck etc, etc).
Get one with three phase motor, even if you only have single phase at home - VFD will take care of it and will give you also easy variable speed (great for thread cutting).
Don't buy into the usual UK propaganda about Myford - they are overpriced c***p.
Don't buy into Chinese propaganda - you are always better off with secondhand industrial stuff (made in the days when we had industry).

The only problem is, that it is clear that you need somebody holding your hand when buying secondhand ... (there is plenty of old s****t out there as well).
Since you are in UK (apart from frame building specific considerations) you are probably better off asking on some UK based forums? for local advice?

BTW my workshop is 5.5m x 2.8m and I have Bridgeport mill and 4" centre height lathe and a lot more in... H&S guy would have a fit if he saw it, but it works for me.

[bencooper]

Plenty of decent Boxfords etc about - try G&M Tools or Home & Workshop:

G&M Tools - Huge stock of used lathes and machine tools for engineers and cabinet makers shipped worldwide
Home and Workshop Machinery - used Lathes, millers, drills, grinders, saws, tooling

Agree about Myfords - they sell for double what an equivalent non-Myford would because of the name. Also keep an eye on eBay for local bargains - my main lathe is a very good Denford that cost me £160.

Other advice depends on what you'll be doing with it. Threaded spindles are fine and there's loads of spare chucks and other stuff still about for them, though you might need to make a new backplate - no big deal, took me about half an hour to make one for a second-hand 6-jaw chuck. That's one thing I'd strongly recommend for bike building use, by the way.

[shand]

We only have a very small lathe and it does 95% of what I'd want a lathe to do while building frames and bikes. The other 5% could be done if I had a bigger bore through the spindle. As above, buy something as big as you can.

I'd also quite like a screwcutting gearbox. Also, a lot of older lathes will come with imperial dials so either get used to that, look for a machine with metric dials or fit (or buy a machine with) DRO. Consider tooling also. You'll spend way more than you think on tooling.

I've used these guys before :

PremierMachineTools

worth keeping an eye on their site. Some of the bigger Harrison and Colchester machines can be picked up fairly easily on ebay but prices do seem to be creeping back up.

Harrison-155 on EBAY

[Mike Pickwell]

Thank you for the replies folks. Some great advice there and it backs up my own thoughts, which is encouraging.

I've been down in the workshop this evening knocking up a hand file rack from some the angle steel offcuts left over from making my bench frame. It's starting to feel like a proper workshop now.

I understand that some of the larger lathes will have a spindle bore diameter big enough to take a frame tube which makes doing things like squaring off a head-tube super convenient. Is that something I should realistically be looking for or will that only be possible on the real monster machines?

[bencooper]

I've never missed having a bore that big - any conceivable head tube I want to use will clamp perfectly nicely in my 6-jaw, and for long things a bullnose centre in the tailstock is usually the best way to go. I quite happily do crown races by just clamping the steerer in the chuck.

Of course it's also possible to square off a head tube with a head tube reaming and facing tool. That's how I usually do it - the facing and reaming is the final stage with hand tools after the frame is painted.

With small workshops - mine is about the same size as yours - then there's a tradeoff where the possible advantages of a very big lathe are outweighed by the space it takes up.

[Mike Pickwell]

Thanks again.

I would always ream and face a head tube after brazing to take care of any distortion, it's more that I want to start with a nicely squared off head tube on the jig to encourage things to start out nice and straight. Eventually I would like to be able to do at least some of my mitring by machine to speed things up.

[cardinal-creative]

I know that the South Bend 10" heavy comes with a 1 3/8" spindle hole.

Not all Heavy 10 lathes come with the large spindle thru holes. 10r models have a smaller thru hole and cast bearings as opposed to the 10l model that has the larger thru hole and bronze sleeve bearings. Both have different spindle threads and take different collets.

If you end up with a 10r, you can swap a 10l spindle over easily. Drops right in the head. I'm in the third year of a teardown and rebuild on a clapped out 10r and did the 10l spindle swap along the way.

[Doug Fattic]

Just as a data point there was a South Bend heavy 10L listed west of South Bend, IN on Craigslist that sold for $800 about a week ago. It was probably a 40's model but hardly ever used and in very nice shape. It just sat in the corner of a shop collecting years of dust. It was old enough so the quick change box only had 1 lever instead of 2 but that wouldn't have mattered to me since I wasn't going to cut threads on it anyway. Naturally it sold 20 minutes before I called. The guy that sold it said he was just flipping it to make a few bucks. There are some real deals that can be found if one is very patient. One of my summer class framebuilding students found a decent Bridgeport for only $1000 in September. Of course it didn't have any digital readouts. A year of so ago a South Bend vertical mill was for sale near me for $1200. He obviously set the price for bargaining. He had 2 instruction manuals so I bought one since I didn't have one for my South Bend mill.

Lathes are a versatile machines but requires machining knowledge to take advantage of their features. If one is only going to use it for framebuilding applications like trimming or drilling the ends of seat stays then one can get by with a much less than perfect lathe.