Good beginner lathe?

[Hillz1985]

Hi there, I have been interested in having a go at wood turning for a while. At the weekend I visited my father in law who has recently Bought one and I turned out my first bowl. I was hooked, could stop until I had finished it (5 hours!!!). I am now looking for a lathe of my own. I have a budget of around £200 for a bit of a starter set but with eBay being awash with all sorts of different brands shapes and sizes I would like some advice before making my purchase. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

John

 

[AJB Temple]

Advice: do a course. Learn a bit about turning before you buy a lathe or tools. I already had a lathe when I went on a short (2 days at Axminster) turning course. (see review thread here). After the course I realised I would have liked a different lathe. I had learned quite a bit about what worked for me.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

The best advice is to join your nearest woodturning club and delay the choice until you've been on a few of their practical days where you get to turn anyway. The practical advice and quite likely access to inexpensive, good quality 2nd hand machines/chucks/drives/tools will:

a) save you a fortune and
b) avoid you making mistakes with specifications.

AJB's advice of going training is also a must but it's primary focus is skills development and if with a company like Axy, there has to be a bias towards focusing attention on their own kit.

By joining a club, you'll get multiple sources of advice from experts with no commercial agenda and equal access to all manner of 2nd hand opportunities.

it is an unfortunate circumstance that many woodturners are considerably North of 60 and as a consequence if you join a club of 50 or more, deceased sales of all tools/machines are not uncommon. Usually the club elders organise the sale of this kit on behalf of widows and it's a very fertile opportunity to acquire great quality tools for sensible prices.

Beyond this, just the unbiased advice and guidance is worth it's weight and will save you from many costly pitfalls.

You can research clubs close to you from the map contained in this website which is the Association of Woodturners of Great Britain, the official industry association.

http://www.awgb.co.uk/

 

[Hillz1985]

Thanks for the advice, I have contacted someone who runs a club in York on the first Friday of each month for some more info. I really just wanted to get cracking too, I work shifts so can't commit to regular clubs etc. Any advise of just a good all rounder would be great. My father in laws was a record DML 34 which seemed OK if not slightly underpowered, the motor would struggle when I was sanding and applying pressure with sand paper. Like I say I have a budget but it's flexible, I guess that the depreciation of a second hand machine isn't great so wouldn't loose much money anyway if I decided to change?

 

[Jacob]

Record CL series are very good and not pricy 2nd hand. I'm a recent convert, with some experience of other makes. The Arundel J4 was one of my favourites and sometimes go for peanuts on Ebay. The Records are not quite so nicely made but are much heavier and very practical.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

I would "yes and" Jacobs's comments. The CL range are classics. A bit ugly and old fashioned looking but they're more or less indestructible and hold their 2nd hand value so you'd be right about the depreciation issue if you just want to get going fast. The trouble is if you buy a DML or similar mini lathe you'll outgrow it in about 6 weeks!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

CLs are a good place to start. Be careful if you watch evilbay, you can often see something for say £250 and think that's not bad, then see another similar for £400 and think that's daylight robbery - but if you look more carefully you'll realise that the £250 one is bare, and the £400 has £400 of tools and chucks with it. It matters a lot when you're starting from scratch, and will have to pay full price for your bits and pieces. And believe me - there are loads of them.

 

[Jacob]

Yep the kit can be worth more than the lathe.
The swivelling headstock on the CL is handy even if you don't have the extra bowl rest etc. You can swivel it towards you for better access/light and still use the basic tool rest.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

We're kind of getting into the sort of territory that joining a club would be so useful for now which is "what else do you need" because while we're on the subject you've also got to factor in safety (lungs and eyes/face) and sharp tools (many options but at a minimum a bench grinder is essential as the tools are HSS and blunt quickly).

Sharpening and turning are marriage partners in the same sentence. Turning without sharp tools is simply not possible and furthermore is dangerous.

So with that said here's my starter for 10 shopping list:

- Lathe
- chuck (can do without but wont want to)
- tools (roughing gouge, spindle gouge, bowl gouge, parting tool, skew chisel at a minimum)
- sharpening means (dry grinder at a minimum)
- health and safety (face mask or powered respirator, shatterproof eye wear, dust extraction or at a minimum a good quality dust mask)
- calipers for measuring diameters (could be a knackered pair of Aldi verniers with the corners ground off)
- decent drive and live tail centres (pref steb type but again not necessary at the start)

Personally I would also strongly coach you in the direction of variable speed. It's so very very very very very very very much better than manually changing a pulley belt.

So just make that £200......£800 and you'll be fine

 

[Hillz1985]

So, here are a couple of options;

331839811328

141972117416

141953357585

For some reason I can't paste links on this message but if you put the above numbers into eBay it will bring up the items

What are your thoughts?

Thanks again for your patience

 

[Hillz1985]

Hahaha! Thanks bob, I'll just head down the garden and water my money tree

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Yes.....it can get a bit like that

Just start...you'll quickly realise what you're missing and acquire it....read Stiggy's posts from the start and you'll see the path you're about to tread.

Turning is a bit like heroine addiction...and you've started now! By the end of the summer you'll be turning over old grannies just to get an Ashley Isles skew

I'm from Rotherham originally by the way so I know all about money trees

 

[Mal]

Bob is right further back up the thread.
I started turning about a year ago, and bought a Record Power DML 18SH lathe.
A great starting place, new for less than £250, including a set of 4 Record Power tools. I have turned plenty of bowls etc, and had great fun with it.
But then.... I needed different chucks to go with it, a grinder for sharpening tools, attachments for the lathe to turn larger bowls and on and on...
I know I have 'outgrown' it, so to speak, so need to buy something bigger, one I don't have to manually change the belt when I want to change speed, but for the foreseeable, the funds just aren't there sadly.
When I do upgrade, I'll still keep this one for smaller work, as for the money, I think it was a great buy.

 

[Hillz1985]

Does anyone have any experience with the scheppach dmt 180? There is one reasonably priced on eBay with a few tools.

 

[Jacob]

....
Personally I would also strongly coach you in the direction of variable speed. It's so very very very very very very very much better than manually changing a pulley belt.....

Except on the machine I had (Hegner hdb 200 xl) it lost power. Slow speed and the thing would come to a halt if you tried too hard. Pulley belts opposite - lower gear more power. I don't know if this is a feature of the complicated variable speed set ups in general - maybe others are better.
NB the Hegner was a horrid machine in other ways - avoid.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

There is a trade off to some extent with loss of torque but I've found from messing about with the CL4 and latterly the Woodfast that if you stick the belt on about the mid pulley you get a decent compromise ie it will do about 2000 revs which is fast enough for most of what I do and yet it's torque at low revs isn't too bad. If you've got a monster bowl on you can still stop the lathe with a heavy roughing cut for sure so you just back off the pressure a bit.

I think also if you're trying to move that much wood from that size of blank it's probably time to move up to a 2 horse motor.

So I agree variable isn't a panacea and for those on a limited budget then for sure get a fixed speed lathe rather than nothing at all but the sheer flexibility you have at your fingertips with VS is glorious. I suspect you may have more patience than me Jacob and that's a factor too. I reckon the single most useful benefit of VS is the journey from out of true, heavy blank to true. I tend to adjust the speed up to 3 times as I progress up that taper and the fabulous thing about VS is you can turn up the speed until you directly encounter an unacceptable vibration and then dial back an 8th of a turn to stabilise the blank. This means you're turning at the optimal speed for that situation. Once you've shifted some more wood, you can go up a bit more until the vibe sets in and again stop. It's a great method for getting it done safely and with quality in mind.

The other scenario that crops up all the time is drilling with a Jacobs chuck in the tailstock. You can simply swap the centre out, stick you're Jacobs chuck in, slow the lathe and start drilling with a massive forstener bit to facilitate end grain hollowing or whatever else you want. Swap the bits out and wind the lathe back up and you're going again.

I think with my terminal impatience, if I had to keep adjusting pulley belts to fulfil that procedure I'd have planed my own head off by the end of the day

Having said that, if budget prevented me from getting VS, which is clearly more expensive, I'd still get a lathe without it

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Also (assuming you've space) don't discount a large lathe because you only want to turn small things. You can turn very small things on very large lathes, but not the reverse. A few evenings at a club talking to other turners and having a mess about will serve you well - it'll give a little more sense of direction. You might start out intending to turn bowls, then decide you want to spend your life turning pens - it's best done before you spend much.

 

[Hillz1985]

Right I'm talking to a guy online now who's selling a lathe and extraction system tools, all bits and bobs he's about 70 miles away from me so I've contacted him asking if we can do a deal on the lot. He's advised me that he will for £250-£350 below is his advert and it has 23 hours left on the auction so I need to get cracking really!!!

Thanks again for your patience;

Tyme Cub Lathe and Tools

Here is my Tyme Cub Lathe suitable for wood turning and bowl turning, it comes with a stand which it is bolted to and some tools as in the pictures. It is 48'' lengh and 48'' high with a working bed of about 38'' it has an adjustable headstock which spins around when you want to do big bowl turning. There is a bit of surface rust where it has been sat in the garage and not used for a while, but this will clean off nicely, due to the size and weight of this item it is collection only and cash on collection. Below is a bit about this lathe any questions or if you would like to view please contact me.

 

[Hillz1985]

I have read some literature online about the tyme cub and it seems like a good place to start? What are your thoughts?

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Honestly?

You're impulse buying.......you haven't thought this through, you don't yet know what you want exactly and yet you're allowing an e bay deadline to push you into an almost panic decision. If you want my advice then just slow down. Bargains like this are common place on all the 2nd hand markets so it wont be the last and there are more up North than down here. The fact it's covered in rust doesn't enamour me let alone having done no research whatsoever on the actual lathe (I'm not familiar with that model myself).

But what comes across loud and clear in your post is how you've become a slave to doing this quickly!

Sorry to be brutally honest but I would do it differently which is to spend a week or two researching the options so I KNOW what I want then I would actively target that solution. Right now, the tail is wagging the dog!!