Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

All discussion about lathes including but not limited to: South Bend, Hardinge, Logan, Monarch, Clausing and other HSM lathes, including imports

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GlennW
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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by GlennW »

BadDog wrote:I believe it does, most in that class of modern lathe do. I know my 17x60 does (called an Osama Sr, but parts identical to the Victor HD line). Just throw a lever and I have a full range of metric threads, different position every fractional I've ever heard of and many more, yet another combination of levers provides feeds from glacial to scary.
That's interesting. I asked as I was unaware that that was a common feature other than with some Hardinge lathes and their clones.

Mine requires changing gears to cut metric threads, but I bought my first lathe in 1979 and have yet to have a need to cut a metric thread, so it's irrelevant!

If I needed metric threading regularly I'd probably just buy a metric lathe.

I used a 5914 for a while and thought it was a pretty nice little lathe.
Glenn

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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by SteveM »

I may be getting a 5914 (my dad's lathe). Just have to figure how to move it.

Dad did a lot of great work on that lathe. When he got it, he kept his South Bend 9A, figuring he'd use that for smaller work. He never did. The Clausing has a much higher spindle speed (2000 rpm) and with collets can handle any small stuff you would want to do.

You should look to see that it has the collet adapter.

When you said "no clutch/brake option", I had to check, and the 5914 has it. Big lever on the right side of the carriage.

Dad's has the hydraulic drive, but dad rebuilt it a number of years ago (he probably had it for 30 years before it needed to be rebuilt, so I should get a couple of decades out of it before I need to go into it. ).

It will NOT have the chuck come off in reverse as the key will hold the chuck in place. The threaded collar only holds the chuck onto the spindle and if you have it snug, there's no chance that reversing it is going to make it come off.

You can see the manual for the 5914 here:
http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/181/3407.pdf

It will differ from your lathe in some ways, but this will give you an idea of what it is.

Steve
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SteveHGraham
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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by SteveHGraham »

wlw-19958 wrote:(Sigh), Steve, I think you need to let go of your anger. We all
make mistakes. If we learn from them, then it wasn't entirely
in vain.
I don't know. I get a lot of fulfillment out of my personal mission to denigrate all Clausing products. :D

Actually, I'm just trying to help people avoid being fooled by other people's unrealistic claims about old tools. I worked hard to get good advice, and I was still royally misled by people who didn't care whether I wasted my time and money, as long as I supported America's dying manual lathe industry. Nobody who recommended I buy that stupid lathe ever offered to chip in and help me with the loss I took, so they can pound sand 24/7/365 as far as I'm concerned.

I wish someone like me had been around to warn me, or at least that people hadn't filled my mind with complete BS. Frankly, I don't give a crap about machine makers and dealers and their feelings. I don't care at all if they go bankrupt and end up in therapy and their families are sold for medical experiments. I'm loyal to fellow forum members. That's the morally correct position.

I don't think my Taiwan lathe is inferior to old American in any way, but it's clearly superior in quite a few obvious ways (price, hardened ways, metric threads, dual metric/inch dials, huge bore, good top speed, great low speed, modern controls and wiring, warranty, 100% availability of new parts, Meehanite body, huge gap, modern metallurgy...), and there are also very fine Japanese and Korean lathes out there for reasonable money. Who would have the audacity to warn a buyer off a Mori Seiki or a Whacheon? Well, someone at Practical Machinist has probably done it, but a lot of those guys probably aren't over Iwojima and the Chosin Reservoir.

Not trying to make anyone crazy, but I will stand up for forum members against sellers and manufacturers 150% of the time, until I take the big dirt snooze. I hope no one has a problem with that.
BadDog wrote:I believe it does, most in that class of modern lathe do. I know my 17x60 does (called an Osama Sr, but parts identical to the Victor HD line). Just throw a lever and I have a full range of metric threads, different position every fractional I've ever heard of and many more, yet another combination of levers provides feeds from glacial to scary. If you avoid the cheap bottom line imports, modern lathes have a lot to offer in such respects.
I think that lathe is nearly identical to mine. Anyway, I have a lot of metric threads available without change gears. That's not really rare, though. Grizzly's Chinese and Taiwanese offerings are loaded with threads.

I'm sure the Clausing the OP is looking at will be fine, but if a newish used Taiwan job with two chucks showed up for similar money, I'd forget the Clausing in a heartbeat.
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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by BadDog »

You are not wrong about the risks of used, US or otherwise. Or the potential benefits of buying better quality modern imports, if you can afford it But I don't think anyone has ever downplayed that, including when you were leading up to the Clausing purchase you so love to hate. I know I have said it many times long before you came on here looking for lathe advice, and I'm a relative newbie who got the same advice myself when I was looking/learning. With the old iron you simply must review it carefully to be sure it's still suitable for your needs. Really no different than an old muscle car, or classic Cady. There are good ones out there, but nobody would suggest that buying one of the web without checking it out is a good idea.

But from what I recall, not to be indelicate, but I believe your problems were largely of your own creation, stemmed mostly from a lack of due diligence, and further compounded by lack of follow through. The guy you were pointed to as a potential resource (I wasn't going to say it but changed my mind: Joe at Plaza is the resource) always had a very good reputation. But that seems to have started changing about the time you bought yours, at least that's when I started seeing several very unhappy customers. That's just bad luck/timing. Before that, it was just the opposite, and you can't know when a change like that is likely to happen. So you were given some unintentional bad advice on that one, possibly by me.

However, regardless of that, you did something I (and most of us I believe) would never have suggested or considered. You bought an old lathe sight unseen from many miles away. No way, no how, was that a good decision even if they guy did have a stellar reputation. I have considered remote lathes, though I never bought one, but always had or asked for a local impartial observer to check it out at the very least. But buying a lathe like that is stacking the deck against you at the best of times.

Then, again going on memory, what you got was not what you ordered. For me, full stop, game over, I get a full refund in total, and shipping back is not my problem, or I make it my life's mission to make sure your life is miserable in every way possible. State's Attorney, small claims, web smear, anything and everything I could conceive of. And you as a lawyer were in a perfect position to follow through, much more so than me (or most). But you accepted it, along with a series of problems (and lies?) with the motor if I recall correctly?

So, from my memory, which I admit is very poor, and I'm sure you will correct any inaccuracies, you certainly got a raw deal, but your own choices had a huge portion to play in the poor outcome. I personally know more than one person who bought a used Clausing and got a delightful machine that they love. I did so with a tired Rockwell 11" used in a production setting, and it turned out to be a wonderful lathe with a little work. I know others who bought Clausings (and others) with known problems and rebuilt them, also very happy with them. Likewise for Monarch (including a 10EE repower), L&S, and so on. But in no case that I'm aware of did they buy sight unseen and without preview of some sort, nor would they have accepted bate-n-switch substitutions. Frankly, based on my memory of those events, I don't think any outcome other than terrible was likely at all in your case. That does not mean that buying old machines (of any sort) is something that every newcomer should be energetically steered away from. Your tale is a very good cautionary one, and sharing it is a good thing, but certainly not an example supporting that the majority fear buying a older quality lathe more than juggling sweating sticky sticks of TNT.
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wlw-19958
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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by wlw-19958 »

Hi There,

Steve, you've got accept responsibility for your actions. If you buy
a clapped-out lathe, you get a clapped-out lathe. It wouldn't matter
if it was a Clausing, a Hardinge, a Monarch, a Colchester, a Harrison
or any other make of lathe. You made a classic newbie mistake!

If everyone told you that a Honda Accord is a great car and you go out
and buy one that has a blown head gasket and bad brakes and a slipping
automatic transmission, is it their fault? Of course not. Your issue is with
the dealer that sold it to you but you refused to take it back. Instead, you
decided to denigrate all Accords and Honda products in general. That isn't
honest or fair to Honda or Accord owners who are happy with their cars.

Good Luck!
-Blue Chips-
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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by Harold_V »

GlennW wrote:That's interesting. I asked as I was unaware that that was a common feature other than with some Hardinge lathes and their clones.
Actually relatively common. My Graziano, purchased new in '67, requires only a throw of a handle to select metric threads.

They also included a set of ten change gears, to extend the range, both above and below those that can be selected with the quick change gear box.

While uncommon for me, I have had need for the metric function on a few occasions, so I'm well pleased that the machine has that feature. When you run a job shop, you really can't predict what work might come in.

Harold
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SteveHGraham
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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by SteveHGraham »

BadDog wrote:But from what I recall, not to be indelicate, but I believe your problems were largely of your own creation, stemmed mostly from a lack of due diligence, and further compounded by lack of follow through. The guy you were pointed to as a potential resource (I wasn't going to say it but changed my mind: Joe at Plaza is the resource) always had a very good reputation. But that seems to have started changing about the time you bought yours, at least that's when I started seeing several very unhappy customers. That's just bad luck/timing. Before that, it was just the opposite, and you can't know when a change like that is likely to happen. So you were given some unintentional bad advice on that one, possibly by me.

However, regardless of that, you did something I (and most of us I believe) would never have suggested or considered. You bought an old lathe sight unseen from many miles away. No way, no how, was that a good decision even if they guy did have a stellar reputation.
You are basically right. I don't want to get caught up in excuses. It was a bad idea to buy the lathe, and now I would be the first to tell anyone not to do what I did (pretty much what I'm catching heat for right now). On the other hand, I did work on the decision for a very long time, hoping to avoid exactly what happened. That was probably the most irritating part of it; trying hard to do it right and still getting bitten in the rear end.

The big mistake I made wasn't lack of research or refusing to take advice; it was trusting people (like the bitter old Asia-bashers) who gave me bad advice. So now I try to prevent other people from going down the same path. It annoys folks, but that says more about their issues and priorities than mine.

I had one friend (not on a forum) who gave me terrific advice. He is a tool expert who works in the industry, and he told me to buy a Grizzly G4003G. He said the Chinese were able to make things as well as they wanted to, and that a new Chinese job would work just as well as an American antique. I knew he was a true expert, and I should have listened, but I had all these voices in my other ear, telling me all Asian machines were junk, and that I would have terrible problems. That's not an exaggeration; people say stupid things like that, and they can sound credible to a person who has never run a machine tool.
But you accepted it, along with a series of problems (and lies?) with the motor if I recall correctly?
I am not going to say he lied, but I asked for one thing, and I received another. He made a substantial effort to make things right, but in my opinion, it fell far short of what I deserved.

For personal reasons, I decided to keep the lathe and make do. I worked with him, and I was courteous to the point of being ingratiating. Eventually I stopped receiving responses.

Now I don't care what he sells or what the price is; I am all done dealing with him. If I get involved with him again, the consequences are 100% my fault.

I don't understand why people get annoyed with me for talking about it. I thought one purpose of the forum was to help other hobbyists avoid problems.

Of course you are right; no one should ever buy a lathe he (or someone he really trusts) has not examined, or which isn't new, warrantied, backed by a reputable seller, AND paid for by credit card. Add "don't believe the ridiculous anti-Asian lies" to that list, and you have a recipe for happiness.

NOW I know these things. But that means I have an obligation to repeat them whenever someone new asks for advice, so I will continue saying this stuff until Chaski shuts down or I get the boot.

I feel like we should be able to be honest about these things without being accused of bad motives or bad manners. Call me crazy, but I think keeping quiet while other people drive into a ditch is worse.

The funny thing about this is that I also caught a little crap for buying two new machines. If you buy new, people will make fun of you for having more money than brains, and they'll tell you about the imaginary like-new $800 Bridgeports that pop up on Craigslist every day. They'll tell you about all their friends who got barely-used machines free or for almost nothing.

They say only death and taxes are certain, but I would add criticism to the list. I don't worry much about pleasing other people, partly because it's a worthless goal, and partly because it's impossible.
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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by BadDog »

Telling your story as you just didn't wouldn't bring any negative response. But that's not what you do. Countless times since your experience you post up with an anti-old-iron response that is just as wrong and irrational as the hard line anti-Asian line you describe. Other than a few people who got burned pretty bad and then preach their message much as you have on the other side, I haven't seen an epidemic of rabidly anti-Asian tool post.

Either way you can get burned. Buy bottom line consumer tooling from Asia, you like get a "pre-assembled kit of castings" requiring a lot of work to make right. For about the same price, you can generally get a "pre-worn/broken kit of casting" in the form of old iron. Or, you might just get lucky on either side and get something you love. On the low-end Asian side, you pretty much pays your money and takes your chances. On pre-worn side, you can educate and carefully cherry pick by looking through and rejecting till you "get lucky" if you have time, patience, and live in an area where such things happen with some frequency. But if you can afford it and want it now, with reasonable confidence, you pretty much go to Grizzly. Still not crazy expensive, and the net (and this forum) is full up with accounts of getting garbage from Grizzly, but the problems are pretty much always sorted through (actual) customer service, though that may take months on top of not infrequent initial delivery delays. And if you REALLY want it now and better, you can step up to Accurite/Victor/Sharp/etc and get a true industial lathe. Further still to Mori/Webb/etc or the HLV family (etc) and your in the same realm as premium old iron. Not quite as nice on the ultimate mass and fine jeweled perfection, but with modern amenities and without pre-worn risks.

That's my take, and most of the helpful knowledgeable folks on all the forums run along those lines. Sure, there are the "collectors" and the hard line "US at all costs" folks that pop up dismissing all Asian. Then there are those like yourself who hard line the opposite side and dismiss all old-iron insisting every sane person should go to Grizzly. Neither is better than the other, and both do the reader a real disservice.

So if you want to take the time to tell your story accurately, I don't think anyone would have a negative reaction at all. But when you start preaching the wonders of Grizzly and it's archenemy the lies of old-iron, we still usually ignore it, but it does wear thin. and sometimes thin enough to elicit a response.
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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by BadDog »

Along those same lines of "my limited experience not only applies to everything I might encounter, but I feel I must warn all others I encounter!", I think we all understand and sympathize with you. We've all likely been there, and probably ARE there, maybe without realizing it.

For instance, when I was young and didn't even have enough money to know how I was going to pay for next weeks groceries (I've been there, and worse), I also had to do the best I could do to maintain transportation, particularly living in a very rural area of N AL where the nearest grocery store was 30 minutes away. So clearly I wasn't buying new anything. I went through Fords, GM, and Chrysler products over a span of time, generally whatever I estimated was cheap value when I needed it. By no means a large sampling, but I have decided I don't trust Chrysler products at all, and though I did go through some very good ones, in my experience most Fords cost too much to maintain and are exceedingly difficult to find parts and work on. So GM is my automatic first choice vehicle line, and I can't imagine why anyone would ever choose anything else! ;)

Your sample size is likewise too small to base any reasonable choice on. And while it is an excellent cautionary tale for newbies looking for machines, I think that the useful moral of your story is not what you think it is, and not what you usually summarize and distill down to post in these threads...
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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by SteveHGraham »

BadDog wrote:Telling your story as you just didn't wouldn't bring any negative response. But that's not what you do. Countless times since your experience you post up with an anti-old-iron response that is just as wrong and irrational as the hard line anti-Asian line you describe.
I contest that. I believe you're remembering the angry responses I drew from other people.

I would buy USEFUL old iron in a heartbeat IF it were available LOCALLY at a GOOD PRICE. I bought an old Rockwell drill press, and I looked for old stuff locally before giving up and buying an Asian mill and lathe. I rehabilitated a neat old Rockwell belt sander and posted it here. If I lived in Ohio, I'd be at HGR every weekend.

I would love to have bought a top-quality American mill in relatively new condition, for two or three thousand dollars, instead of spending more on new semi-Taiwanese. I don't know about lathes, though, with the metric hassle. I did try to find good used Taiwanese and Korean lathes. For that matter, I tried hard to make my Clausing work.

Where I live, the dealers are sky-high with poor inventory, and the by-owner pickings are slim indeed.

I didn't say anything emotional or irrational about the Clausing. Look up and see. Just pointed out things that should be considered.
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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by BadDog »

People who push American antiques will tell you this thing turns aluminum into diamonds, but if you buy Chinese or Taiwanese, you will get more capabilities. New ones come with steady rests, follow rests, quick change tool posts, and some other tooling.
And
It's not a bee. It's a squadron of helicopter gunships.
The first one set a bee mildly buzzing in my bonnet, and as the latest of many, some much less circumspect, eventually it prompted me to respond. The second sealed the deal.

I felt really badly for you when it happened (and since) and never understood why you went along with what you did (personal reasons as you said now and then, I get it, but don't understand). Sorry to be blunt, but I think most people would have forced a better outcome. But since then your efforts to warn others clearly underscore the problems and pain you experienced, but I don't recall ever seeing the extenuating circumstances that contributed hugely (can't be over stated in my opinion) being included in your posts. And that makes them much less helpful to those looking for information. A person avoiding the issues contributing to your unhappiness might well get a wonderful Clausing that is perfectly suitable for their needs and loaded with useful tooling (possibly even the oft-missing steady/follow) for FAR less than a comparable sized new Grizzly. In fact, if your willing to pay what the Grizzly costs new, you have the budget to land (with appropriate effort) a fine survivor of better quality, but there is no customer service net. And if you think your Grizzly is of comparable quality to the hallowed leaders, then you've never actually used one that is still in fighting trim. Grizzly, like many used machines (including Taiwan origin like mine), is an option to get something adequate to your needs depending on budget, but it is not the same thing.

Anyway, more than enough has been said on my part. I probably wouldn't have posted this, but I'm waiting on the rain to slack off. Yes, rain, in Phoenix, first since early January I think...
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Re: Clausing 5900 lathe, whats your take?

Post by reggie_obe »

At this point it's all: coulda, woulda, shoulda, what's done is done.

I will ask, did you consider a large dealer like Machinery Values in NJ or even Don who runs the PM forum and is a full time used machinery dealer in Ga? Is middle Georgia too far to drive to inspect not one but perhaps two machines, a lathe and a mill?
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