Post
by SteveHGraham » Thu Jan 12, 2012 9:26 pm
Well, that's a concern. After I describe it accurately, no one wants it. I should do what the seller did. Claim it's a 5914, tell people it looks like it has seen "very little use," and say, "I think you will be pleased."
It came from a prison teaching program. I should have realized it's not a good sign when a lathe is no longer good enough for a prison. Clearly, I can't donate it to a teaching program, because it has already been rejected by the bottom of the barrel. It works fine, and I got a good price for what it is, but when you try to make it do what other lathes do, you run into problems that cost money to fix.
The $400 was for a Clausing Colchester lever. Not my personal experience, I admit. I should not have posted that. The guy who made that claim could have been on PCP for all I know.
I did get quoted $450 for a few pieces of the big set of gears you need for metric threading. They were used. If I had bought them, waited 15 years for the rest of the metric set to become available, bought them, and learned to use them, I'd have a great lathe which would do metric threading after only twenty minutes of parts-swapping, and I'd only be down another thousand dollars.
Man, what was I thinking? I wish I could travel back in time and slap myself. I'm sure I have over $4000 in this thing, including the VFD, new chuck, shipping, face plate, motor, and so on. Think what I could get for that, right now. I really researched. I did my best to find out what I should buy. It's hard to believe I ended up in this mess, after all that work. I'm so glad I bought a new Chaiwanese mill. I've had some minor problems which were mainly due to my own ignorance, but I got exactly what I paid for, I got a great price, and I will probably never want another mill.
Actually, I got more than I paid for. The seller threw in a variable-speed head, which is wonderful to use. I also have a coolant system. Some day I'll figure out how to use it.
I got a mind-roasting quote on some new Clausing parts, but I can't find it in my email. I probably deleted it because it gave me nightmares.
I suspect there is a big contingent of old union guys out there who hate China and Taiwan for putting their companies out of business and knocking the wheels off the gravy train, and they show up on forums and tell ridiculous lies about the amazing quality of forty-year-old American machinery. As if that's going to bring back the American machine tool industry, or have even a tiny effect on China's success. I'm sure the Chicoms are wetting the bed in terror. The passenger pigeon and Kim Il Jong have brighter futures than the American machine tool industry.
The things these guys say are so stupid and so obviously wrong, it has to be deliberate deception. Surely no knowledgeable person thinks an American lathe used in production and then sold because of wear or obsolescence can compete with a decent Grizzly fresh off the truck. You would have to be psychotic to think that. And don't get me started on the service you get from used machine dealers, who are about as accountable as serial rapists. If you get a crappy lathe from Grizzly, you give them a call, and they send a truck to take it back. Try that with some character fifteen states away, who already cashed the check he made you write because he knows credit card companies do charge-backs.
Anyway, there are all sorts of machines out there that do more, for less money. I still can't believe I bought this crazy thing. I thought it was a bargain. Oh, well. I've had a lot of fun with it, and maybe I could make money parting it out. And when I get a real lathe, I'll appreciate and enjoy it that much more.
That's really what I should do. I'm sure it's worth more in pieces than it is whole. And there will be one less lathe out there to bite suckers in the rear end.
My advice to newbies is to buy new or like-new, make sure you get metric threading and lots of tooling, and have fun. Do NOT become a nurse for a geriatric lathe with outdated features, unless you get it for a hundred bucks.
I guarantee, someone will pipe up and claim I don't know good machinery when I see it, and that three nuts from a Clausing will cut more metal than a whole truck full of Asian lathes. But I promise you, he won't offer to put his money where his mouth is. Anybody who wants this lathe can send me $2250, and it will be on its way.
Sorry about the rant, but you probably knew it was coming.
Every hard-fried egg began life sunny-side up.