Thread: Need Info On Using A Lathe

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Be a nice addition to your garage, one thing you can do to stop unsupervised or unauthorised people from using it is to put a keylock into the electrical circuit. That is a cheap piece of mind solution. Do as the others suggest take some time to go to community colledge to learn some turning skills,as they will teach you spindle speeds, set up and working centers, tool centers and counterbalancing. There are quite a few machining operations you can do on a lathe. Then there are all the accesories like 3 and 4 jaw chucks ceters and steadys. They get to be good fun to operate after a while. Oh and the big thing on the turning or any other engineering coarse for that matter is that they teach SAFETY.

I will tell you to get it, sell it, and use that money to buy yourself something nice. The problem you'll have is the size. It's really too big to be useful for turning anything under a couple of inches in diameter and you'll find it just taking up space in the shop.
I have a 9x14 Smithy and I have turned everything from 3/32 to 6" in diameter on it. I run production with it on diameters from 1/8th to 1 1/2" every day and, even when fabbing parts for the cars, I find I very rarely go over 2".
If you think you have a real need for a lathe or mill use this one to step down to something manageable.
Mark

You have hit my real concern, that this thing is just too big for anything I would ever do on it. I forgot my camera today, but I just measured it. The length is 7 and 1/2 feet, and I think you could turn driveshafts with it. Seriously, this was on a WWII Battleship, and is built like one.

I hate to pass up something free, but sometimes these things can complicate your life, and I try to keep my life as simple as possible. I would have to load, haul, and unload it, and it would take up space I don't have to spare in the shop.

Not sure what I'm going to do yet, but I appreciate all the comebacks.

Don