Buying a new Lathe....Asian?

FYI when I last tried to order a few small parts from Grizzly a couple of years ago they refused to ship to Canada. May have changed since then, but I would recommend asking first before placing any order.

They didn't give a reason for the order refusal but I suspect that it may be so they don't undercut sales of Busy Bee who do operate in Canada. As others mentioned the owners of Grizzly and Busy Bee are related somehow.

Busy Bee do not offer a lathe that is comparable to the "new heavy 10" from Grizzly. It looks like a nice machine, although I have seen complaints on various forums that it has some odd design quirks that reduce capability in certain ops. (on old SB lathes not all came with all features, but what was present worked perfectly, for many years, even if abused)

Edited By Jeff Dayman on 04/10/2020 12:34:06

Given the pedigree of the Emco Maximat Super11 of which it is a clone I wonder what the 'quirks' are? I know my Super 11 suffers from 'small tool syndrome' due to the restricted height of the compound slide top surface to the spindle centre line. but it is possible to work around this. The advantage is the rigidity of the compound slide which gives the length of action (over 4" ) rarely seen on other machines. As I understand it the machine is a South Bend product rather than a Grizzly product. If this is true, acknowledging that it may be South Bend as in the successors to the name rather than the SB company of old, I would expect that any successor would wish to preserve the good name rather than import goods of questionable quality.

Accepting that Grizzly may not trade in Canada I am sure that there is someone in Canada that is a SB agent - so perhaps there is a route into Canada for their product other than shipping from Grizzly? My ex-colleague in Az told me the New Heavy 10 was as good as the Super 11 he had used in the UK - same silky smooth controls and outstanding accuracy.

Edited By Oily Rag on 04/10/2020 13:51:18

The complaints I recall were that spindle hole was restricted some way inside it, so it looks big but isn't, control levers on some early ones fouled each other, carriage / cross slide unnecessarily high reducing turning capacity, some early ones had very short tailstock barrels/screws, and early leadscrews had pitch errors which showed up on longer threaded parts.

The design of the new heavy 10 was done as a collaboration between Grizzly's owner and the Taiwan factory. "wants" and "asks" from various SB forums and individuals in communication with Grizzly's owner also influenced the design. But make no mistake these are Taiwanese lathes not US lathes and not designed by the original SB company in any way. The original SB company in South Bend Indiana ceased to exist many years ago.

Grizzly now own the South Bend trade name. There is no Canadian sales agent for South Bend or Grizzly. What makes you sure there someone in Canada who is a SB agent? Note that I would be happy to be proven wrong on this point, but I can't find any such agent. I would be buying stuff from them if there were.

Many machine tool firms worldwide did have agents here in the 1960's -1980's but no longer. There are some CNC machine firms who still do, supporting the car manufacturing and machine shop businesses, but there are fewer and fewer as industry declines here.

Edited By Jeff Dayman on 04/10/2020 14:59:51

That was the case up to some years ago. The brothers had an agreement not to deal in each others territory. A while back, that changed and Grizzly started shipping to Canada (and presumably Busy-Bee will ship to the US but I imagine the traffic is heavily loaded the other way).

I ordered a number of smaller items (lathe chucks, power feed for mill etc) from Grizzly a few years ago without problem - simply by placing the order online.

In fact, BB will get stuff in from Grizzly for you, including shipping, customs clearance etc - for a price. Saves the import hassle but it's cheaper to do it yourself.

.... Unless, of course, it's changed again. I've no reason to think so but it's some years since I went that route.

Edit: I think this explains it

Edited By Bandersnatch on 04/10/2020 17:00:39

Jeff,

Obviously I bow to your local knowledge in the case of machinery sales, being that I live the other side of the pond. I assumed that someone had purchased the South Bend name as it is iconic and denotes good design, build and longevity - amongst my lathes I have a 1940 SB 9" model 'A' which was a 14th birthday present to me from my father - It came from a scrapyard and cost him the sum of 30/- (£1.50 ~ about $1.20 at current conversion rates)! It was salvaged from a LSU mobile workshop (LSU = Light Support Unit - to the Royal Tank Regiment). A wonderful lathe that still gives good service - after a bed regrind and apron and tailstock refurb. I do like the look of the SB 1007 though I just wonder how close a clone it is to the Super 11?

It's a few years since I looked at the Southbend Heavy 10 on Grizzly's website, but I remember that it is quite a close copy of the earlier Emco Super 11, before Emco put the curved covers on some of their lathes.

The Southbend Heavy 10 has just about the same headstock, screwcutting gearbox, tailstock, apron, saddle, topslide and crosslide with three longitudinal tee slots. The tailstock now has a camlock lever and although the bed casting looks the same as that on the Emco the guidways are different and it is now machined with triple vee ways, with two vee ways guiding the saddle which is a very nice detail as used on original Southbend lathes.

Edited By Lathejack on 04/10/2020 21:51:18

Edited By Lathejack on 04/10/2020 22:00:02

The topic of lathe pruchase in Canada of course comes up quite often on the HSM forum so I assume you have done your homework and read everything there from teh last few years.

Hi All,

The South Bend Heavy 10 looks a superb machine, but it is also close to $10,000 CAD! I think that is way outside what i was looking to pay.....especially since the Precision Matthews (favourite so far) is closer to $3000-3500CAD

Bandersnatch is quite correct, Grizzly do ship to Canada now. I enquired with them online today about a couple of items but after considering US to CDN dollar exchange, shipping costs, brokerage and duty fees, and Canadian 13% sales tax (yes, even on imported goods) costs are just too high so I will be doing without, for now. The "extras" mentioned above are almost twice the list value of the goods. I may be able to find these items eventually locally or bear down and make my own from scratch, or modify something from KBC Tools Canada.

As always, wise to shop a bit, and consider the TOTAL cost when buying in Canada from the US. There is a lot of cost tacked on. The whole "brokerage" lark is a gold mine. Two minutes of forms work on a computer or on paper by a "customs broker" - $50 to $75 Canadian please. A disgusting no value added ripoff at the border.

Thanks to Bandersnatch for the change of state notice re Grizzly.

Oily Rag - Glad to hear you are happy with your 9" model "A" SB. I agree 100% with you about design, build, and longevity of these lathes, they definitely stand up over time. As said, I really like mine.

Cheers All.

Moreover, if you bring in goods in person, or have them sent via Canada Post, they will rarely be assessed duty/taxes on values under $150 and almost never under $100 since it's uneconomic to do so.

Courier services and shipping companies on the other hand always assess and charge duty and taxes no matter what the value and charge you for them along with the brokerage charges as you point out. I have to take it on faith that these duty/taxes actually are passed along to Canada-Customs.

Edited By Bandersnatch on 05/10/2020 18:58:53

I used to import a lot materials from the US......

but in the end just gave up becaus of the greedy people in suits.....

funny how stuff can come from China without any duties to be paid......

I once wanted some expensive items from Israel...... a few thousand pounds worth....

to get them in France where I lived would have trebled the cost....

I was advised to get the paper work done in Greece......still in the EU.....

all told expences and duties paid where just a few hundred Euro's.....!!!!!

I am not sure but have been told that items from the US if delivered to Belgium are duty free....?????

Does anyone remember (1966'ish`) when you wanted something from outside Britain you had to get special forms and make payment to the UK bank and answer all kinds of questions.....

I wanted a workshop manual for a Harley Duo-Glide......might as well been asking for gold......hahaha...

..........

That might well be true given the number of American cars imported from Belgium into the UK back in the 80's