Thread: Metal lathes

I am wanting to buy a metal lathe. I have very limited experience. I do know that there are a few here that have a lot of experience.
I want to do some small wood turning as well as metal turning. I am leaning towards the Taig system from Lee Valley. There are a number of fancier metal lathes on the market. I do not have space for two lathes.
I know so little on the subject that I’m not completely sure what questions to ask.
Can I turn wood on any metal lathe as long as I am careful about not letting my chips lay all over the bed?
Are any of the small lathes remarkably better than the others?
Are there any features that I should be making sure my potential new lathe has?

I know Bill Barber used a fairly hefty metal lathe for brushes.
I reckon the proper attachments and gouges/tooling would garner same results on a small metal lathe.
B52 should know. I shall fetch him.......

I think Bill used the metal lathe for ivory

B52 has several lathes and I am hoping he will have a grand response to my questions. I’m hoping as time passes we can also discuss the ins and outs of various tooling. I have a lot to learn!

I have a small Jet wood lathe and a Smithy Midas metal lathe/mill. I have used the metal lathe for wood. It worked fine. In order to do so I made my own tool rest. That was about the only modification or extra tooling that I needed. I used my regular wood chisels to cut the wood by hand. The biggest reason for using one over the other when woodworking is due to the headstock. I needed a large three jaw chuck and I don't have one for the Jet. Typically I use the Jet when woodworking though. I have more mounting options (screw chuck, drill chuck, etc...).

I did a lot of reading on these as i was wanting one too. But then after learning about all the tools and attachments that go with it i stepped back and figured maybe one day but for now i can wait.

Good luck Shaun. It sounds like a great tool to have. I will be watching for what ya make.

I have a small 8" South Bend belt drive lathe from the 1960s or 1970s I got at an auction from a tech school it was three phase but I swapped the motor out to single phase. Paid about $600.00 for the lathe. It hadn't been used real hard, the ways are in good shape and it doesn't have a huge amount of lash. The main disadvantage is that to move it you need a tractor or forklift.

As someone told me at the time the tooling is the expensive part and they were right! I've been buying tooling as needed. It can cut threads and do just about anything I need. I've also spent some time running the gear drive lathes where you don't have to mess with belts to change speed. They are nice but the used ones tend to be more pricey but might be coming down as everyone continues to switch to CNC.

Three jaw chucks are easiest to use but not as precise as the four jaw ones. For what I'm doing I usually use my three jaw.

Hope that helps!

Yes 3 jaw chucks are easy but with a 4 jaw you have a lot more that you can do. Joel (Benz here at SRP was a 3rd generation machinist and he turned me onto this guy's channel). He really blows me away.

If you skip in to 4:25 minutes you'll see him started to chuck the project up and then indicate it for machining.

Thanks for sharing, that is amazing and really hard to do!

My dad was a machinist but no where near Adam's level. I wish dad was still alive so we could watch the videos together, I think he'd really enjoy them.

Here's another project that took a lot of figuring to be able to to mount the project securely in the machine which this time is a shaper.



I've posted before about how I worked after school for an old machinist when I was 14 years old. He had a huge lathe that had a 36 inch swing. I saw him use it once and it scared the hell out of me. He used it to turn the pivots on a bulldozer's hydraulic rams down so we could install bushings made on one of the smaller lathes.

I can still him standing calmly on the platform while a cylinder was swinging.