Member postings for Martyn Edwards 1

I would use KEE or the Interclamp system from The Metal Store. They do free cutting of the galvanised tube so all you have to do is sort height width depth and any fitting for shelves. Free Delivery and it is all put together in minutes with a single Allen key. Shelf could be a double thickness of 25mm MDF glued together (could put a bit of sheet metal on the top if you require it.

Size the tube to support the weight.

Your budget, length and diameter of materials you wish to turn will in the end determine the particular lathe you end up with also whether it will be bench or stand fixed.

If you require repeatability, that is producing multiple units of the same design you might want to consider lathe with a copy attachment. Some wood Lathes even have indexing (Harvey T40).

So I would think you might start by listing the required functions and maximum sizes down and then try to match them to what is available, both new and second hand.

The best in the second hand market I would think would be the Union Graduate, every school used to have one. The other quality European Lathes to look out for S/H are Hegner Lathes with their variable speed function although they're like hen's teeth to find. Other than that you would be mainly looking at Far East offerings where the Harvey Lathes are in my opinion some of the best out there.

I was going to suggest Draftsight, very similar to Autocad but I've just checked and the free version ceased in Dec 2019.

As I spent a lot of time sourcing, specifying and buying machinery in a past life and latterly in the Far East here's a bit of information of what goes on out there in regards to the machines available to us in the UK

Most of the imported cheaper manual machines we buy for our hobby are made out in the provinces in pretty basic factories where the working conditions and methods of manufacture we haven't been seen over here for many many years. A lot of their production is for the home market. These machines are then purchased by companies such as Weiss and other brands you may be familiar with. They take in the machines and effectively QC them and upgrade them with such things as CE wiring, better control boards, safety features that are not usually required in the home market addition features etc.,

The machines can be branded e.g. to names of the UK importers and even have importer added branding features such as badges and paint colour. With all this we must understand that the original manufacture is not high tech or particularly to a high accuracy. I have been in factories in Nanjing and seen most of the UK imported mini lathes being worked on on the same line but painted up for different UK importers.

There are always exceptions and Sieg is one of them as they manufacture their machinery in their own factory in Shanghai from start to finish and in that way the quality can be maintained and be better, thus the higher price because labour rates and company costs are higher in the Cities.

So it depends on your budget, the UK suppliers support and access to spare parts which invariably you will need, usually the electronics and motors.

Unfortunately the last UK manufacturer of Manual Lathes ceased production a a year or so ago (Boxford). To give an example a Boxford 330 with a useful amount of accessories and tooling last cost upwards of £14K the Chinese copies of this lathe come fully kitted at around £4K. The brand names (Colchester & Harrison) as that's all they are now are manufactured out in Taiwan and are the same lathe with one or the other name on them. Engineering standards and quality are usually a lot higher with machines from Taiwan.