Thread: Please help me choose a wood lathe

you realise of course this is an Australian site and grizzly is not a brand seen here just like the said bears so probably wont get a lot of info on that brand.
the choice of a lathe is personal not dollar drivenand we all have our own idea as to the best lathe.
Interested you may be but maybe a pool cue would be a job for further down the line once you get the hang of turning tapers etc.
Just so you can let us know how you did the cue and post photos of it I suggest you get onto a club in your area and learn a few safety tips first, its very hard to follow the forum with a large lump of timber stuck in your head or the chisel in your eye do to a grab or somesuch
Pete

Hei Noah,
Because this is an aussie forum we don't have any knowledge of your model numbers.
Those specs sound fairly reasonable but you want to make sure the head and tail stock have morse tapers, and that the bed is cast iron and not steel tube - steel tube can flex like mad and will affect the quality of your work.

The spur drive is shaped like a cross, has a sharp point in the centre and goes in to the work at the head end of the lathe to drive the wood. The live centre goes in the tail stock to hold work and has a bearing so it can rotate with the wood.

Cheers
Paul

Noah,

I looked at the lathe you are talking about on the site and it looks a bit crappy to me. I would go with the G0584 Variable Speed Wood Lathe. Which is very similar to our MC900, an excellent entry level lathe.

Dan

Noah,

I used my first lathe (a cheap $100 chinese one) to make a short cue (to use on the side of the table closest to a wall), and to put better quality tips on the other cues.

All the cues were too long for my lathe, so I bolted a bit of wood to the end of the workbench, drilled a hole through it, greased it, and used it to control the other end of the workpiece.

While this worked for me, if you're making a two piece cue, you'll probably find both pieces will fit on a lathe without difficulty.

Out of interest, do some googling for a cue-maker's lathe, and see what the professionals use for this job.

Cheers,
Andrew

I'm with Dan. I think you would be very quickly disappointed in your choice. The G0584 at around $350 looks to be a much better lathe.
One word of warning from one novice to another. Spindle turning ie: pool cue, isn't as easy as it sounds. I bought my lathe when I was building a staircase. I intended to justify the cost of the purchase by turning my own Newel Posts. It just isn't that simple!!!
When you turn a long piece of timber, the thinner it gets the more it acts like a skipping rope. It tends to bow in the middle and is difficult for a novice to turn with any degree of accuracy.
If you think you might make a few cues then you should invest in the above lathe and a device called a Three Point Steady or something similar. It is a device which connects to the bed of the lathe and can be slid along the bed the same way the tailstock does. It's purpose is to hold the spindle in the centre to stop the flexing. There's a picture of one in this link.
http://www.timbecon.com.au/products/...ies-377_0.aspx

Good turners will use the free hand to hold the spindle steady and one-hand the chisel. If you try this as a beginner you may see how flexible a bone is when it tries to wrap itself around a spindle. Not to mention the chisel stuck in your nostril. (bit of an exageration but you get the point)

Put the question to the guys at Woodnet or some other US site because it's very hard for us to answer machinery questions for a different hemisphere.
You will very quickly find out (as we all have) that a lathe, tools, chuck and three point steady is going to be just the start. Your $200 is going to blow out to $600 before one piece of sawdust hits the floor.

Rumor has it there was some cheap symtecs not so long ago.....