Harbor Freight - Gems and Junk

Picked up the 18.5" (24" total length) cast steel lathe.

http://www.harborfreight.com/5-speed-bench-top-wood-lathe-65345.html

They have models that go longer, but this one is extremely stout. The drive bearings can handle lots of thrust.

I chucked up a piece of 3" square persimmon, which is otherwise known as white ebony. It's extremely dense.

At first I thought the motor was crap. Turns out, I was just an excited kid and didn't tighten up the tail and it was clutching on the spikes. Tightened it up and this thing flies.

The wood was wet (wax coated) and square. I didn't trim it octagonally and it still took everything down without slowing down once.

I'm going to mod it for metal spinning. I want new early A body headlamp bezels. Maybe stainless. Some of the work can be done by spinning and final shape on some wood or metal bucks.

Lots of people are using these lathes with metal and making mill bases to go in place of the chisel rest.

I'm working on a stainless 1"x1.5" solid rectangle stock rest with multiple hole/ position vertical round bar fence for resting my metal spinning tools against.

They don't offer it anymore, because it was kind of crappy, but I picked up the small english wheel (they advertised it as the motorcycle fender english wheel) and I'm going to use the dies for interchangeable rollers on one of the spinning tools, as well.

They do offer just the large english wheel dies, though.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um-biLfru-c"]Metal Spinning, - YouTube[/ame]

That is a really massive lathe, but you get the idea. I'm building a set of milled riser blocks for the motor and tail, as well as some new V groove pulleys (this lathe uses a multiple groove belt) so I can get the drive and tail up.

The thing that I've been told to check on the lathe, is the tail to drive centering. Mine checked out ok, but some people on Youtube checked the tail right against the center spike inserted into the drive and had to angle mill correct the tail.

You don't always need a tail to do what you want. The thread is 8tpi, so you can use other internal round or square chucks, as well as drill chucks on the tail or drive.

For $200, this is a really useful and modifiable tool that can make it's own tools.