Mini lathe for occasional chainsaw mods

[cumminskta]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been sorting through searched threads on here but couldn’t come up with a general consensus on which maybe the best direction to go in for my situation.

I’m a full time,production arborist who recently got into porting my own saws. I’d like to pickup a lathe to advance my work and see if this is something I want to stick with. That being said…. Purchasing a used, full size unit is most likely out of the question due to space and time constraints. With a young family and full time career it’s not likely time spent searching for, repairing/rewiring a lathe to be used occasionally would be well received.

That’s led me to checking out the newer, ~$800 mini lathe’s and tooling. Is this something any hobby porters have made work or a waste of time and money?

Thank you!

 

[KostasVolos]

I used to have one .
I was working with brass ,18/10 stainless and Titanium grade 2.
All my cutting tools were of the ceramic coated carbide kind.

It failed while I was working on a
Titanium grade 5 tubing .
The tool post broke ( cast iron ) and the motor was fried .

Not good for jobs demanding precision ,due to low mass and
low quality chucks used at mini lathes .

With optional upgrades ( plenty of them ) ,some mods and
with carefully bolting and balancing the lathe on a heavy bench ,precision gets
better ,but still far from the
one that larger lathes offer.

Here's a bit of my work :
https://www.instagram.com/1920desafetyrazors/

 

[Sierra_rider]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been sorting through searched threads on here but couldn’t come up with a general consensus on which maybe the best direction to go in for my situation.

I’m a full time,production arborist who recently got into porting my own saws. I’d like to pickup a lathe to advance my work and see if this is something I want to stick with. That being said…. Purchasing a used, full size unit is most likely out of the question due to space and time constraints. With a young family and full time career it’s not likely time spent searching for, repairing/rewiring a lathe to be used occasionally would be well received.

That’s led me to checking out the newer, ~$800 mini lathe’s and tooling. Is this something any hobby porters have made work or a waste of time and money?

Thank you!

They're a bit on the small side...I started out with one of the 7x12"s and frequently ran into issues of it just not being large enough. Even though you can physically fit a saw cylinder on them, you don't have enough cross-slide travel to deck larger cylinders. Coupled with that is the short length. 12" may sound like a lot, but the edge of you cross slide gets awfully close to the chuck when decking a cylinder. Also cut quality suffers on heavier cuts with them...not to mention that they are underpowered for that.

I ended up buying a used 12x36" lathe shortly after that, I wished I just did that in the first place. I was skeptical of buying a larger lathe before, but once I had it, I started using it for much more than saw cylinders. I use it now on almost a daily basis, be careful though...lathes are addicting and you might feel compelled to buy a bunch more stuff, I now have a drill mill too...and a lot less space in my shop.

I think the 9x19 sized import lathes are generally considered the "minimum" for saw cylinders. It has the right combination of size and power. While probably not super easy to find, I imagine a used one would be similarly priced to a new 7x12.

 

[Bill G]

Search for a quality used bench lathe such as a Craftsman or similar. There are tons out there

 

[cumminskta]

Thanks for everyone’s input. I ended up buying an older 10” lathe in great shape that included a bunch of tooling with in a short drive of me.

I didn't think that would happen, I thought I’d be searching for a deal like this for years.