Can anyone  recomend  a good  brand name  lathe?  Also a good  size for gunsmithing use. Any  body have experiance with SHOP FOX?      THANKS  J.B.

JB

The first question that you need to answer is “what am I going to be doing with this lathe”?   Am I going to be making small parts or am I going to make rifle barrels? 

For small parts & pistol barrels, one of the small import lathes will probably work fine for you; if it’s the latter, you need a large lathe.. and one with some mass (weight), and a decent hole in the headstock. 

I’ve got three lathes in the shop:  a small Chinese lathe, that I use mostly for polishing small parts,  a 10 x 36 Sheldon,  and a 14 x 40 which I use for barrel work. 

I will say that American quality is better than import, but the majority of manual American lathes that I’ve run across lately have be pretty worn.   

I’m sure a lot of forum members are lathe owners/users, so give us an idea of what you needs are, and price range, we can provide more feedback. 

Mike Hunter
Hunter Restorations
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If someone wants to come to Colo.And wants a South Bend Model A 9X24?. With Qujick Change, Collet closer 3 @4 Jaw chuck. AS CLOSE TO NEW AS YOU CAN GET. I will be haveing one for sale. Whitey

Thanks for your replies.  It would be used for making small parts and learing how to use a lathe. Dont  want  to get a lot of money in it, but dont want junk either. I  try and take care of my tools and like to buy ones that last.            J.B.

After looking at several worn-out american lathes that i could afford I bought a new 13/40 Grizzly and have been completely satified, if I were buying today it would be the Grizz;y Gunsmithing model, this model comes with an out-board chuck.   leadball

JB, if you are looking  at a small lathe to start with and learn with, I would suggest looking at the 7X14 sold by MicroMark. Yes it is a small lathe, Yes it is often referred to as a "Project Lathe" in that you will need to do some smoothing and tuning to it to get it up and running smoothly.  On the other hand, for under $700 you will end up with a nice little lathe, doesn't take up much space and can be moved around if need be. There is lots of info on the web about these small lathes, check out (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links). There is also a groupe on Yahoo for the 7x12 lathes, lots of good folks there and an excellent source of info, all kinds of people from the totally inexperienced to the experts.
I have one of the MicroMart 7X14 lathes and I am pretty happy with it. You just have to keep in mind that it will not hog off a lot of material at one time but take you time and things will come off and make lots of chips on the floor. They will also cut threads, both English and metric. If you need to get tooling for these small lathes, (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) is probably the best source out there. I don't think that there is any part on those little lathes that they do not carry.
The only major repair that I have had to do to mine is to replace the headstock bearings with taper rolling bearings. I did that over a weekend and I think total cost was under $30.00 or so.   
Hope this helps you out some.
Sam

I am not knocking the mini lathes etc. But I do belong to several Yahoo groups including a couple of the lathe (smaller) groups IMO bases on what I have heard. The quaility is not always there for the money they seem to have lots of problem except for a couple brands.ant they do cost more. In spite of this I am sure for doing some things they would be fine.But as others have said if you plan on doing much gun work. I would buy the best I could afford that I had room for. as sometimes you will end up with as much money in the little one as you you could have got agood used one for. This is all JMO. Whitey

The MicroMark 7x14 has dual speed ranges and a continuous dial, so you don't have to mess with gear changes.  It's the knob on the left in the picture above.  Another nice feature is that it's set up for inches, so you don't have to calculate conversions from metric.  That's not the case with many of these imported lathes.

If anybody has or will be getting one of these lathes, I have a collet set from MicroMark I'm not using.

Paul