New member in the Scottish Borders

Hello. I'm Jonny and I'm a tool addict. Now I've got that off my chest...

I'm a boatbuilder, based in the Scottish Borders. Except for the mandatory "have a wild stab at machining", whilst serving my time, I'm a bumbling amateur. In order to aid said bumbling, I have a Chester Lux mill. Originally purchased for awkward drilling and routering tasks in timber and composites, it is increasingly subjected to metal. I'm hoping to get to the stage where I can actually produce hardware for boats, but that will be a way off. Currently I'm looking to replace a wood lathe for a metal lathe, and am undecided between a Chinese or old British number.

I look forward to reading through the wealth of information available here!

Cheers

Welcome along to the forum.

There are many old posts re old industrial versus new Chinese lathe. I had an old 1942 built American Southbend for 45 years, It did most of what I needed to do, bigger stuff I took into work. With retirement approaching about 10 years ago I sold the old lathe and bought a used Taiwanese copy of a Harrison M300. Bigger machine and good enough for what I do.

two of us! two of us!

Welcome, from the hills of Westruther.

Thanks Chris. It's a constant battle between "I want it now, and I want it shiny" vs. the potential for a nice, hefty bit of old kit.

Calum - you're just around the corner! Well, a long corner. I'm over in Greenlaw.

Welcome Jonny. I have the old Myford super 7 & love it. Equaly there are lots of happy easterm lathe owners.

If you have room. Models like the Harrison & Colchester student lathes are very good.

Steve.

If it's of any interest, Warco have just repopulated their page of used machines - one has already gone [waggles eyebrows] but there are a few Warco gearhead machines of various sizes at prices that might be worth not hanging around for!

Hello Jonny Rock, I think our club has two lathe from deceased member workshops, which, which I'm told they wish to dispose of. Could be wrong. If you send me a PM with an email address, I'll forward you details. John

Hello Jonny and welcome. I think it's fair to say that most of us are bumbling amateurs, even professional engineers because the home workshop is generally a far cry from a commercial one.

May I ask what sort of boats? I assume wooden ones. I'm particularly interested because my late father-in-law was a boatbuilder, mainly of cabin cruisers.

I think one of the important things when deciding on a lathe is what diameter of parts is envisaged.

Brian