Lathe help

[Coldharbour Bikes]

Hi, I'm looking at getting my first lathe. I don't have vast amount of money, and don't want to buy second hand. At the moment it will only be for tube mitring, but I would like to have a certain amount of future proofing built in to the purchase. Does anyone know whether this lathe will fulfil my requirements:

Warco WM-250V-F - Variable Speed Metalworking Lathe - WM250 VF

Thanks in advance for any help.

Yours sincerely,

Matt

[Mike Mcdermid]

Hi, I'm looking at getting my first lathe. I don't have vast amount of money, and don't want to buy second hand. At the moment it will only be for tube mitring, but I would like to have a certain amount of future proofing built in to the purchase. Does anyone know whether this lathe will fulfil my requirements:

Warco WM-250V-F - Variable Speed Metalworking Lathe - WM250 VF

Thanks in advance for any help.

Yours sincerely,

Matt

Are you in the UK?

[Coldharbour Bikes]

Are you in the UK?

For my sins, yes.

[Andrew R Stewart]

First thing i note about the lathe is the 26mm spindle bore. Will you make your own forks? What steerer diameters? I have done some lathe tube mitering before. While on a small and loose lathe I found that hand jobbing was just as quick if you include the set up time (to change from basic turning to a miller arangement). So if you advance to using the lathe for general turning expect the milling to be less efficient. I also found that the hole saw miters still needed hand touch up so i was doing the last steps of a hand job anyway.

Second- How well equiped is your tooling? $1700+ can buy a lot of tools that can make all the other building steps easier/faster.

Third- I might consider a milling machine first if you're going to do mitering mostly. While a lathe is more flexible in the ways you can machine on it (then a mill) if you make tooling the mill is likely to be the better choice. Basicly any piece that's not round is a milling potential.

Fourth- That's a relitively small lathe. Good in that only a second person is needed to move it. Bad in that it's got less capicity and less rigidness then a larger unit. My lathe is a 6" Atlas, bought new. In hind sight i should have gotten a 10" or larger. Andy.

[ToddFarr]

Andy makes some good points. I'm wondering why you don't want to buy second hand? The older lathes are really nice. I've determined that 10-12" swing is about the minimum I'd want for frame building also look for the machines with bigger spindle bores. The Southbend Heavy 10" has 1-3/8", The Logan 12" Lathes are all around that 1-3/8" bore too, Clockwork has the Delta Gunsmithing lathe I want that has 1-1/2" I think. I would at least get something over 1-1/8" because cutting the crown race on a lathe is the hot ticket. Works way better than the expensive hand tools IMO.

I'm not sure what type of lathes you will find in the UK second hand, but there are some pretty nice ones here if you are patient.

[shand]

Just to echo what the others are saying, if it's primarily for tube mitering, I'd get a milling machine. I also can't think why you'd want a new machine over a second hand one. For mitering heat-treated thinwall tubing, you want the heaviest machine you can get. There's tons of 2nd hand stuff available in the UK.

Cheers

Steven

[cardinal-creative]

The Heavy 10 was also produced with a thicker walled spindle that results in a 1-1/16" ID. I believe this machine is designated the 10R instead of the typical 10L and was offered in the early years of production. I've been told the smaller ID spindle can be swapped directly with a larger ID donor spindle.

Just a heads up since this smaller ID would limit some operations benefiting the larger through hole found on the 10L.

[EricKeller]

I am guessing that older U.S. made lathes are pretty scarce in the U.K. given their storied machine building history.

I have a 13" lathe that has a fairly large spindle bore and that's one of the best things about it. I do occasionally put long, whippy tubes in it and wish I hadn't, but otherwise it's a really nice feature.

[shand]

There are plenty of older British and European lathes still out there and can be picked up pretty cheap. Something like the Colchester Student (I think?) which has a 1.5" bore. Lots of these and later Harrison lathes were often used in schools and colleges and appear on ebay and with tool dealers pretty regularly.