Thread: Advice required on new lathe

Hi HDholden,

If you want to turn bowls and platters in any quantity then you want a machine with a swivel head so you can stand in front of the job with 180o access scope rather than leaning over the lathe bed which becomes very tiring and exposes you to a lot more dust and shavings. I don't know about current tooling. I've got three lathes all pretty old dating to the 60's, two are the heavy duty WA Tough brand and one is a dedicated bowl lathe a Viceroy. I bought all of these second hand and they have served me well over the last 35 years or thereabouts. I've bought a replacement VSD motor for each of he Tough's and replaced the Viceroy motor when the original Singer industrial sewing machine motor it was fitted with expired. Otherwise one set of replacement bearings in one machine and that's it.

My advice would be to look for good heavy second hand machines not new lightweight tackle.

As for chucks I'd recommend the Vicmarc brand. For smaller work say bowls up to 300mm dia. I'd go for the VM120. I've got a VM 150 that's close to worn out but that has taken me about 15 years of almost daily semi commercial use to get it to that point. As you get familiar with the Vicmarc chucks you will see the need to get some more chuck jaws to supplement the standard set it comes with. If you are going to turn pepper mills you will need a 25mm pin jaw set first up and a set of long nose jaws does make bowl turning ( back of bowl) very mush easier than using the standard jaws for re-gripping the blank.

I've got a few very old carbon steel tools mostly the English pattern broad heavy shallow gouges. These are fantastic for rounding up and roughing out to performing many finishing cuts on spindles. They have most of the attributes of a big skew and almost none of the trauma that goes with that tool. Yes they don't hold an edge for very long but they are very docile to sharpen every few minutes just needs one careful sweep past the grinder in each direction to maintain a fantastic edge. CS tools can be just great if you can sharpen quickly.

Good luck with your turning career. Cheers Old Pete

Look around for the best quality Lathe available , and fit with a top quality Chucking system, Vicmarc ,or Nova, add a set of bowl plates and you will have a good base.

Once you have this , then start buying the tooling as you can afford it,.

As to which Lathe , Vicmarc are probably 1 of the top lathes in Australia, But I think they will be out of the budget, if you go with a fixed headstock Lathe , then BEAVER, make a good machine, .

Jeff

I have had the Cougar that you will see at Trend for about 2 years and it has not missed a beat.
I turn larger bowls on the "outboard" extension that is made up of a bed extension and banjo with an extension shaft to the banjo.and also a fair few pens in the normal mode
Several of my club members have bought this lathe and all are very happy with their decision
I am not far from Parramatta and you would be most welcome to come and have a run on mine
Regards
Bowl-Basher

Thanks Bowl Basher for your kind offer to test out the lathe.
Unfortunately I will have run out of time to test out the lathe before the Trend show is on.
I will take on board all the information that has been passed on.
If I have to wait a bit longer to find something that I will be happy with, so be it.

Sam