How to buy a Metal Lathe part 1

you hey guys welcome back to metal tips and tricks today I want to talk about buying a metal lathe and the process I go through to discover what's strong about a metal lathe and what's weak to determine its price now I have never found a lathe that I wouldn't buy but I will say I bought a lot of lays that I shouldn't and I want to help you guys through those challenges now when you want to buy a lathe where do you find them my discoveries have always been on Craigslist I know you can go to auctions the challenge with auctions is you end up spending a lot of time and then when it comes to the item you want to buy well there's always somebody there that just keeps bidding it up and taking it well past what it's worth and well sometimes our egos get involved in we keep going higher and spend more money than we actually should on something so auctions are not my favorite place my favorite place to locate a new lathe is actually on Craigslist and I have bought legs on Craigslist when I lived in Washington State when I lived in Oregon when I lived in Idaho California Georgia and there's a lot of great opportunities out there if you have patience now it I know a lot of you going to ask what is my favorite metal lathe I don't have an answer for you it's kind of like the newest lathe I bought is my favorite metal lathe so please don't ask me what lathe I should buy because I really don't have an answer for you but I will have an answer that my goal is to never spend more than a thousand dollars on a lathe all the lathes I have in my shop this end Coe my harding's my closet over here I never paid more well the closet I paid 750 500 the harding's I paid I think 800 for it so great opportunities are out there if you are truly patient and the way I look at a lathe at I start at $1000 and I add to it based on how much tooling is with it or I subtract on it based on how little tooling or what shape the lathe is in and that is kind of what we want to talk about here is determined is the lathe worth buying and what is the price that you should be paying for in the condition it's in so when I go out to a to go look at a lathe there's a box of stuff I bring with me a magnet on a stick so I can get into certain places I'll carry digital caliper mics different types of wrenches of course a crescent wrench pliers all sorts of stuff you're going to need screwdrivers a flathead and the Phillips usually just the normal standard size works Allen wrenches you never know if it's going to be metric or English or both hopefully there won't be any Whitworth you're going to want to have some sort of mag base with a dial indicator on it so you can get in and check some parts I like to have cleaners with me this one has paint thinner in it this one has industrial purple and of course you'll need paper towels and what inspection wouldn't be an inspection unless you had some scotch brite pads and the scotch brite pads kind of fit into this category because Mattern how thick the grease is or how much rust is on it you're going to really appreciate having that and these are just some of the general tools I bring along with me I also forgot a tape measure tape measure serves a lot of purposes one is to make sure that it is the size that it was advertised also you want to measure it to make sure it's going to fit in your shop or in the back here truck or your trailer when it's time to move it and let's take a look at this lathe and inspect it as though I were going to buy it you find an ad on Craigslist and you call the person you ask them a few questions like why are you selling the lathe what comes with the lathe and you determine that it's worth your time to go look at it you look at the lathe the first thing you've got to look at is the bed ways you get to study the bed ways and when they were in pristine condition and that's usually at this side because it gets very little where and you want to look at this side and you want to come over you want to come over to here and compare the two surfaces now a great way of comparing is of course visual you know you've got some tools on board you can clean this off a little bit you've got a brillo pad whatever you need to to get this down to look at the original surface and what you'll find out is the ways on here do not how do I want to say contact so here you'll usually see a little hull spot or a little bit of wear and what you want to do is just simply feel it if you can if you can feel it with your fingernail it's okay if you can feel it when you touch it well those little edges you're going to have to determine if this is down let's say two or three thousandths let's say we evaluated that that's okay you're not going to go crazy the way that's going to work okay for you now the very first large metal lathe I ever bought was a Sheldon and it was well let's say worn out was an understatement and I didn't know what to look for this was probably a sixteenth of an inch lower here than it was at this point and at this point that is an unusable lathe I actually ended up learning a lot on that lathe reground it resurfaced it and got it to work but it was a lot of time invested in it something else you can look at is usually on the top of these V ways there's a flat area and you can look at that width there and compare it to the width down here and also sometimes this area here is actually in really good shape and you can compare it to if this is worn out or you're seeing signs it's kind of concerning you I would just walk away because the bed really is the foundation to the lathe now let's talk about the tailstock next a lot of people kind of ignore the tailstock and you don't want to really want to look at it very closely you want to check to make sure that it moves in and out freely and the most important is you want to put your finger inside this bore and see how it feels because if this is worn out chattered feeling rough inside you are not going to have a successful time using the slave you can technically put a ream in here clean this out but this is a hardened way and it would be very it shouldn't a hard way it's a hard surface and be very difficult to clean that out correctly so if that has problems I would probably walk away or let's say we start out with $1,000 let's say we start out with a base number of $1,000 for lave if I have problem with that I'd take $500 off of right there that's all I would offer the guy is $500 because to fix this is really hard to you can't really turn down this because it's actually ground to fit this machine now if the tailstock sits a little low that's okay because you can put shims under here and make it work without a problem but you do want to make sure that the tailstock is in really good shape because remember any time you work on a lathe or buy a new machine the shortcomings are missing parts and missing parts you'll end up spending more on those than you did for the entire machine so as you're looking through this make sure that everything is here now let's talk about the cross slide and the apron here most lathes are very similar in general until you get down into this part here there's a lot of extra levers and switches and rods that you have to contend with and usually the bigger the lathe the more complicated is sometimes the older lathes get even more complicated so you want to get yourself familiar and one of my suggestions is - go - vintage machinery org it's a great website sponsored by Keith Rucker and there you can look up the leis and find different types of manuals form also there's one over in the UK called lathe Co dot uk' another great resource to find information on a lathe and find out what all this stuff down here does now the first handle activates a spur gear that goes along this rack gear and you want to check out this rack make sure that the teeth are consistent from this side to this side remember most the wear is going to be over here there will always be a little bit of slop that is just the way it is because the way the gears are made there'll always be a little bit of problem there now remember that lathe I told you about that I reground the bed on it well that of course lowers the whole carriage making this so it didn't engage so I had to shim up the carriage to get it to work next you'll want to check out the lead screw and make sure that it doesn't have anywhere in this area and you can simply do that by well there's actually a lot of different methods one you'll visually check it out if it's dirty you've got to clean it up you got to take a brush to it write it down with paint thinner clean that up really closely inspect it because if that screw is not in good shape you're not going to get accurate threading a good way to just test it is to take your pitch gauge and just put it up against here and take a look new motor sees or acne but that's okay you can use a standard pitch gauge and just kind of get a sense if it doesn't feel right it's not right you'll know when you put that in there that it feels right check it again on both ends now this one here has three different rods this one here acts very similar to the lead screw but what it does it has a slot in it and a gear so when this rotates it activates the gear and actually powers this handle to the spur gear and it's one of those things you end up using for different speeds and feeds just like this one here is basically set up for threading this one here you can do a lot finer feeds the third rod here turns the lathe on and off it's really kind of nice that when you're working you have this handle in this area and simply rotates it now you want to check to make sure that these rods are not bent now it's really easy on these two rods because all you have to do is turn the lathe on and you'll see if it's out of a line it'll show in a lot of evidence it'll be you know swinging out of balance same with this rod here if it wasn't straight it would be very obvious next you'll want to try the different ways of activating the transmission this one here is a lock nut what it does it's a half nut that clamps on the onto the lead screw turn the lathe on and just try it see how it fits this one here is of course in excellent shape this also has a threading dial that's not a deal-breaker but I wouldn't buy a lay that doesn't have one except I did buy a lay that didn't have one the Harding and it doesn't have one so like I say this is different on all lathes next this lever here controls the cross feed and is activated by this rod also so once we're running try it down that's going to activate the cross slide if I go up it activates the z-axis listen for the different sounds as you're testing it if you're hearing any clicks or rattles or something that doesn't sound solid you know negotiate a better deal again let's say we start out a thousand dollars and I hear something clicking in here well that's about you know I would analyze it very carefully I try to figure it out if it's a broken gear if I you know if I'm hearing a click click click that's very consistent that's usually a damage in a gear you know that's $350 worth of work to me I don't even know if I'll be able to get the gear once I get in there also what can happen if it's a broken gear sometimes you'll engage it and that gear will just be in that spot where it's missing the tooth and it won't turn and it won't do anything you'll get very frustrated so make sure you check that make sure you listen very closely for the whole thing next we want to talk about the cross slide and the compound slide the cross slide is really the workhorse on the metal lathe and everything really depends on is it tight so you know check it out move it around a little bit also grab your Noga or your indicator holder set it up someplace rigid and just see what type of movement you get when moving this around if you're moving it around and you're out let's say a thousandth of an inch it's not the end of the world usually you can tighten up and that's the next thing I want to talk about is the Gibbs on here are adjustable and on this type of lathe and many lathes the give is actually a wedge that moves back and forth and tightens it up what I want you to do is get out your screwdriver and actually tighten this up rack it all the way one way rack it all the way back to the other end and if it starts to bind going one way or another back it off a little bit until it's smooth operation check it here see how it's moving and hopefully you're not finding a big variance because if there's a lot of slop here yet you can tighten down the Gibbs and take away all that slop but you're going to be cranking on the handle really tight and it should move really nice it should be a pleasure to use and this one here again like I said is also powered which is a great advantage when you get into larger lathes usually they are the smaller ones aren't it's not a deal breaker on buying a lathe for me I don't use it as often as I could now the cross slide here you want to unbolt it you want to swivel it around see how it feels again you're going to run the handle all the way one way all the way the other see if it binds up put the indicator on here test you know the slop in it both ways you know also I didn't talk about the slop in this is there's lateral slop this way just because the screw gets moved out this one here is pretty tight because it's a fairly new lathe but you can learn how to work around that when you always push the tool in instead of pull it out so it's not a deal breaker it's just a frustration this one here the same thing you'll want to put an indicator test how much is this way but it's also a point as you find little things that are wrong just notate it type it into your iPhone whatever you have and when you're talking to the person go you know these are the things I found and usually they're standing there and you're finding them and you can kind of hee-haw about it got all that lead screws out a little bit and look at that slop I don't know let me keep looking and well you'll see the price will it's easier to get the price down lower and that's kind of the overview of the carriage like I said there's different ones they'll have clutches on them you'll want to try everything you can and again when you call made that initial phone call find out what the number is on the lathe also on the corner here delay there's always a serial number and sometimes you can actually look up the serial number like on a South Bend and get the information of when it was made and find the documentation on it so you can understand how everything works on and around this part of the lathe so that's the end of part 1 of how to buy a metal lathe in part 2 we're going to cover this whole area and also talk about tooling that comes with the lathe so hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did give me some thumbs up also love to hear your positive comments and remember until next time go out in your shop and build something cool thanks

Channel: Build Something Cool

Views: 316,541

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Id: ihURTItDe2I

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Sun May 08 2016