New shop toy! Vintage craftsman lathe!

[porsche4life]

Went with dad yesterday to pick up this little lathe. In surprisingly good condition considering how old it must be!




We've always talked about getting one, and after he spend 3 days hunting a throttle linkage piece for one of the trucks he decided we needed a lathe so we could make little parts like that.

Now we just have to figure out how to run it! I've been looking at books online and finding stuff to try to just play with it. Need to get some aluminum stock bought so we can play.

[Bill Douglas]

Nice lathe. Not too flash, but fancy enough to make anything you want. Well Done!


I had the good fortune to go to high school where they had a great engineering class. We had lathes that had been used to make heavy artillery equipment for WW2, plus new lathes, milling machine and gas forges. Lots of fun. Monday mornings were for straightening out dirt bikes. I even used to take guns to school to shorten shotgun barrels and crown barrels.

[jim72911t]

First lesson, Grasshopper: Take that chuck key out of the chuck NOW! I know the lathe isn't plugged in (which is funny right there) but don't start out with bad habits. The key should never be in the chuck unless your hand is on it, ask me how I know.

That being said, nice find. What did you pay for that little guy? Should be a fun toy for the garage and will be useful for making small bushings/washers/shims and even some linkage parts, but don't expect to do any real work on it. (Which is fine, as these lathes were always meant for the hobbyist anyway.)

Buy a book or two, scour the web for "machinist's" sites (http://www.homeshopmachinist.net/home would be a good place to start) and respect the machine.

Have fun.

[porsche4life]

Picked it up for $450 and yes it does have the change gears. everything feels good, not too much play.

Lol yes, dad had left the little t handle in there to show me he'd found one that fits. I put it on the table under the lathe after the pic. Its not plugged in because we are still making a home for it. Getting a place cleared in the shop and then going to drop a power line down from the ceiling to plug it into.

We know its small, but it will be good to learn on and should do most of what we need. We feel like at 450, we can get our money back out of it if a bigger one is needed at a later date.