What is a good wood lathe

[Basser69]

I guess I should have specified that I had the Harbor Freight 40" lathe and not one of the benchtop models. That's the one that was poorly crafted in my opinion. I originally wanted the one that cleanslate posted for my first lathe and my wife was gonna get it for me for Christmas. Well, she thought bigger was better so she bought me the one with the square tubing rails.

HAHAHA. That was my first lathe too. You're bringing back memories now man. Don't forget to mention that there's no morse taper in the headstock spindle and you need an adapter from penn state industries to be able to use any kind of threaded accessory with it.

That same lathe was my first starter lathe and I still have it. If anyone in the B'ham metro area wants a less expensive lathe, pm me. All in all for the mone it was/is not a bad one to learn.

[herronjr]

guys i was wondering if the harbor freight lathe was good or not the reviews on the sight were real good i am planning on getting another and the price you cant beat it anyone knowing about the company sure would help.

[handcannon]

If your getting the harbor freight lathe, go with the small bench top model. Not the full size 40" model with the square tubing rails. Read the last few messages above your post. You'll see some of the discussion on HF lathes.

[mkidd0021]

After doing some research and not alot though just some simple tracing of who makes what tools for what companies I found that Jet lathes Grizzly lathes Seig lathes and the harbor freight lathes or central machinery lathes all are made by the same company SEIG (shanghai engineering Industry group) at the same time they are sent here unpainted then jet get the first pick of what they want followed by grizzly then SEIG and central machinery takes what's left. Now that's how it's said to be done but honestly I've been in manufacturing for years the way it more than likely works is jet has certain standards as to what quality issues they will allow and then grizzly probably has a slight lower one and SEIG's own standard is yet lower then harbor freight prob says hey as long as its functional and works properly we will take it. It's the same way in any kind of manufacturing I work for Pentair we are a Hoffman enclosure plant if we send a enclosure to Rockwell or to GE we know they have to be perfect in every way no weld spatter anywhere no pits in the metal no blemish of any kind. Now does that mean those boxes are better than the ones we send to milicron or Allen Bradley well no but will u find a blemish on some of those yea cause they allow it after all it's an electrical box that will sit in some dirty corner of a factory or against the wall collecting dust. I'm not saying jet isn't a better lathe they for the most part probably are at the same time the central machinery ones should be pretty good as well since they are made by the same people

[mkidd0021]

After digging a little more I've found the latter version of my post is correct SEIG tool factory website has some pictures of there workers working on and priming and painting the lathes there in shanghai so more than likely no one from jet personally picks out what lathes they want it's done by a quality standard I don't know what they are but I'm sure it's more cosmetic than anything else along with maybe some tolerance specs