I checked CL and FB MP 3-4 times a day when looking for items. It took about 3 months to finally get my Birmingham. I found a 2-3 month, but as soon as they are posted they are snatched up. It took a while to finally get to "the head of the line." It was well worth the wait in the savings I made. Good luck!
Quote from: customcutter on May 09, 2022, 09:35:02 AMI checked CL and FB MP 3-4 times a day when looking for items. It took about 3 months to finally get my Birmingham. I found a 2-3 month, but as soon as they are posted they are snatched up. It took a while to finally get to "the head of the line." It was well worth the wait in the savings I made. Good luck! That is true if you don't run out of patience as I did, so I ended buying a new grizzly lathe & mill about 9 years ago. I was very dissatisfied with the lathe because I had to put a lot of time and money in it, to make it right, dueTo the lack of good QC. The Mill, also a Grizzly, was flawless.
Price is kind of high maybe (less than new chinese ) but I would travel and snag this in a heartbeat if I didn't already have 2 very nice South Bends. Make an offer? It's been listed before. Still available. It's over 80 years old and wow look at the ways. Like new. I can't imagine owning a lathe with no quick change gearbox or power cross feed through a clutch. https://delaware.craigslist.org/tls/d/newark-south-bend-lathe-mint-condition/7478708156.html
Quote from: Precision Action on May 09, 2022, 04:56:31 AMQuote from: Cyknife on May 08, 2022, 06:58:49 PMI assume you are referencing the smallest lathe mill combo from grizzy. G0937 ?Well, I was...just to have something to get me started, and save my fingers. Now, I don't know what I am going to do. It would be great to find a good deal on used equipment, but my luck has taken a hiatus for a few years, and I don't expect it to pop up any time soon.I checked CL and FB MP 3-4 times a day when looking for items. It took about 3 months to finally get my Birmingham. I found a 2-3 month, but as soon as they are posted they are snatched up. It took a while to finally get to "the head of the line." It was well worth the wait in the savings I made. Good luck!
Quote from: Cyknife on May 08, 2022, 06:58:49 PMI assume you are referencing the smallest lathe mill combo from grizzy. G0937 ?Well, I was...just to have something to get me started, and save my fingers. Now, I don't know what I am going to do. It would be great to find a good deal on used equipment, but my luck has taken a hiatus for a few years, and I don't expect it to pop up any time soon.
I assume you are referencing the smallest lathe mill combo from grizzy. G0937 ?
Quote from: customcutter on May 09, 2022, 09:35:02 AMQuote from: Precision Action on May 09, 2022, 04:56:31 AMQuote from: Cyknife on May 08, 2022, 06:58:49 PMI assume you are referencing the smallest lathe mill combo from grizzy. G0937 ?Well, I was...just to have something to get me started, and save my fingers. Now, I don't know what I am going to do. It would be great to find a good deal on used equipment, but my luck has taken a hiatus for a few years, and I don't expect it to pop up any time soon.I checked CL and FB MP 3-4 times a day when looking for items. It took about 3 months to finally get my Birmingham. I found a 2-3 month, but as soon as they are posted they are snatched up. It took a while to finally get to "the head of the line." It was well worth the wait in the savings I made. Good luck! I was thinking about how you waited and checked often till you found a good deal, and then something came to mind, I can program a bot to do this for me and then have the bot send me a txt if it ever finds one. I was working on the technology last night. Very doable. I will share the program with other members.
Quote from: KWK on May 10, 2022, 02:54:32 AMPrice is kind of high maybe (less than new chinese ) but I would travel and snag this in a heartbeat if I didn't already have 2 very nice South Bends. Make an offer? It's been listed before. Still available. It's over 80 years old and wow look at the ways. Like new. I can't imagine owning a lathe with no quick change gearbox or power cross feed through a clutch. https://delaware.craigslist.org/tls/d/newark-south-bend-lathe-mint-condition/7478708156.htmlYou can't beat those old South Bends, my first lathe ($75.00) was a 9 x 36 SB that was built in 1927 and I had and used it regularly for 50 years.I retired it because of excessive wear on the bed and I got tired of compensating for it when doing long turning. The 10 x 22 Grizzly replaced it.
Quote from: Bob Pratl on May 09, 2022, 10:05:45 AMQuote from: customcutter on May 09, 2022, 09:35:02 AMI checked CL and FB MP 3-4 times a day when looking for items. It took about 3 months to finally get my Birmingham. I found a 2-3 month, but as soon as they are posted they are snatched up. It took a while to finally get to "the head of the line." It was well worth the wait in the savings I made. Good luck! That is true if you don't run out of patience as I did, so I ended buying a new grizzly lathe & mill about 9 years ago. I was very dissatisfied with the lathe because I had to put a lot of time and money in it, to make it right, dueTo the lack of good QC. The Mill, also a Grizzly, was flawless.Kinda 9interesting that you mentioned "lack of good QC" because my first5 bench top lathe was a very "flexible" 7x12 lathe of Harbor Freight vintage and it seemed that it was assembled of all "outta spec parts". That was a couple decades ago when I lived in West Virginia but it worked OK after a lot of mods and "messin' around". I even bought a 14" bed for the lathe from Little Machine Shop to increase the working length. Here is a pic of the HF reject in my WV basement after the bed extension.......One of the issues I had with that lathe was the fact that even the slightest spindle stop from a too aggressive cut would blow the lathe fuse and it didn't take much to bind up the cut due to lack of power. The last time a fuse blew the printed circuit board controlling the speed also barfed and the cost of a new control board was half as much as I paid for the lathe on sale. At that time I decided to replace that lathe with another bench top lathe that was a bit heavier that also had belt drive with step pulleys to control the speed. I read some good reviews about a Chinese lathe that had good QC oversight from the retailer and bought an 8x14 LatheMaster which I still have today. While the LM has served me well I did have issues with the rather small 3/4" spindle bore so it was a hassle to machine 1"ish diameter R9/HW95 pistons (or any 1" diameter stock) needing to use the steady rest.........After about 10 years the LatheMaster needed main bearing replacements so a few years ago I replaced the factory ball bearings with tapered roller bearings which did help some reduce chatter when cutting. Since I disassembled the lathe I also decided to do some modifications. First I bored out the spindle so I could machine 1" diameter stock without using the steady rest. I never turned between centers anyway so I didn't have issues with losing the MT3 spindle bore....... Then I decided to scrape the sliding surfaces, bought a granite surface plate, made a couple scrapers from old files, bought some blue artist oil paint to mark the high spots in the machined surfaces, watched a lot of scraping "how to" on YouTube, then scraped the sliding surfaces of the compound and cross slide which helped to reduce chatter considerably. Concerning Chinese "lack of QC", even though the LatheMaster had positive reviews I was surprised how sloppy the machined mating surfaces were from the factory! When starting the scraping session I found that the blued surface plate left very few color transfer to the machined surfaces. LOL.....the transfer was mostly about three small patches on the surfaces. It took about a week of scraping, "inking", cleaning surface plate, sharpening worn "scraper" edges I ended up with about 50% contact between the surfaces. While certainly not "machinist grade flattening" it was MUCH better than the factory fit that I had used for years so it was good to go. Anywhoo, while I still use the "sweetened" LatheMaster and at 75 years old really don't have a need for a more competent lathe I do wish I had bought "better and heavier" but I didn't want to sink a lot of money into machining to only find out that I didn't like turning perfectly good stock into scrap! \Here is one of the web pages I used to learn about scraping........
Ah, man... Found a Grizzly gunsmithing 14x40 lathe for sale in Savannah, Ga for $4,500. Looks like it is in great condition, and might include some tooling. It would kill my savings, and still be a stretch. I would have to see a return on an investment that large.https://savannah.craigslist.org/tls/d/savannah-14x40-gunsmith-lathe/7478820620.html