i was wondering if anyone had feedback on the usefulness of this lathe
low cost metal lathe

Check KMS Tools in Vancouver - they ship to me here usually free to PG.- plus they have all the bits etc. for milling and metal work

www.kmstools.com/

i have been looking at the King Canada lathe too

I bought my milling stuff from them - my brother buys tons of metal working stuff - nice (very knowledgeable) people ant they have sales all the time. Plus you can pickup bits and tools from them - not so with Princess Auto - they sell the Chinese made lathe but no tools.

Either way let me know if you get one - I have work for ya

RD

wife would have to say yes lol plus set up shop

With the "Boots" on what are you 7' tall ? and you have to ask???

Ya I know me too...........

i dont have a dog house, not even a shed lol

It's why I'm doing shed - must be warmer than dog house...

You see "pop up" in this thread ?
www.fdk3co.com/?gclid=CNKYl-Dzlb4CFciGfgodMYEAFg

BusyBee Tools have some pretty decent lathes and mills too for the hobbyist or garage machinist. They also carry a pretty nice selection of vices, tools etc to go with them. Everytime I drive through Ottawa, I drop by for a walk around...always find some little odds and ends I need.

My standard answer to what lathe to buy is usually to get a larger used machine if you have room. My first lathe, an Emco Unimat 3 was fine for tiny parts (watchmaking) but seriously lacked power for even small nitro engine parts. The next was a used South Bend 9" from the local community college. It cost around the same when you include what I spent on tooling for the Unimat, As a plus, the South Bend came with a lot of tooling. It worked very well for 20 years but had limited rigidity for some projects, especially in steel. It took a long time to turn a gas tuned pipe from steel bar.

My latest lathe is a Monarch 10EE. It has about the same capacity as the South Bend but weighs 5 times as much. That means cutting 1/4" off a steel bar with carbide is like cutting butter. It's accuracy is still more than good enough after 67 years for hobby work. The cost was reasonable, in the same range as small lathes plus tooling, but moving it was a good bit harder. You need to know what's important and what you can fix. There are a lot of great old tools out there but there's also a lot of junk.

This site has some good advice. Also watch for the power requirements. Most homes only have 240 volt single phase, and commercial machine tools run on 240 or 480 volt three phase. Rotary phase converters aren't hard to install, but are a little much for one machine. I ran my mill on a static phase converter for years but got a rotary phase converter for the new lathe. I now know more about Ward Leonard DC drives (incredible for an infinitely variable spindle drive) and rotary phase converters than I ever wanted to.

Lohring Miller