# DIY lathe



## hacklordsniper (Jul 19, 2014)

Here is a DIY lathe seen on flea market. Unfortunately the seller found/stole it somewhere and does not know anything about who and when built it. So no further information is available. Seller asked almost 500 EUR due to the "significant historic vallue because being old"


----------



## Hopper (Jul 19, 2014)

It looks beautifully made with some interesting looking feed mechanisms etc. A real credit to the builder -- whoever he was.


----------



## Tin Falcon (Jul 19, 2014)

Wow a whole lot of thoughts come up on this one.  I will try t keep the thoughts organized and the comments nice. 
Sometimes it is hard to see the line between scroungers scrap dealers and thieves.  I have also  heard stories of families willing to sell a loved ones machine tools and machinist tools for scrap prices. It is sad. 
I was at a scrap yard one day and a woman was selling one fired shiny riffle brass for scrap while her husband lie on his death bed. 
As to the asking price could be fair.  I will say that lathe deserves better than sitting in gravel parking lot at a flea market. 
As to historic value it is there if the history can be documented and verified. 

And i will say the older lathes are often priced as collectors Items. in recent years I have seen unimats in the $600 -800 range and the old craftsman 109s are usually around $350. 
Tin


----------



## Cogsy (Jul 19, 2014)

It is sad that someone spent a great deal of time, effort, skill and pride in making this lathe and no-one will ever know who he was. I hope that if I ever build something worthwhile I'll remember to add a plaque with a bit of detail to my project for posterity.


----------



## MachineTom (Jul 19, 2014)

The fellow who made that, likely did not care if anyone knew his name, he made it for Himself.

My dad built furniture as a hobby, he marked his pieces with a small name stamp on the bottom. I follow a similar idea, my pieces are marked so that only someone disassembling the piece, will see the initials and date. 

The work is its own reward.


----------



## abby (Jul 19, 2014)

A lathe , as any other machine tool , can only be judged by it's suitability for work , it's ability to remove metal at a worthwhile rate and the accuracy of jobs made on it , the plan photograph does not show much detail so we cannot tell if it is well made or not , there are plenty of small second hand lathes on ebay for 500 eu


----------



## hacklordsniper (Jul 21, 2014)

Well it is possible to buy new mini lathe for 500 EUR, so that is not too good of a purchase. The lathe has some interesting mechanical details, i could not understand from what the tailstock is made? It can be seen its not made from scratch, but something is reused for tailstock to be built. 

Also the precision is somehow low, since the lathe uses round ways and it seems like its just a plain rod, not ground or better finished in any way. Also there is no bearings on this ways, just a close fit.


----------



## kathi (Nov 11, 2014)

By varying The ratio between the spindle and cam you could get different numbers of flutes, whole-number ratios gave straight flutes, fractional gave spiral flutes. As the slide operated independently of the cross-slide and topslide, it could be used in conjunction with the taper attachment or even the profile copy attachment, and the leadscrew was available for "threading", it made almost any tap, milling cutter or hob possible!


----------



## kadora (Nov 11, 2014)

Here in Europe  you can buy brand new and more solid QANTUM lathe
for 500 EUR.


----------



## hacklordsniper (Nov 11, 2014)

kadora said:


> Here in Europe  you can buy brand new and more solid QANTUM lathe
> for 500 EUR.



That is correct, but i had Quantum lathe. Its amazingly low quality


----------



## kadora (Nov 11, 2014)

sorry not Quantum lathe but OPTIMUM lathe.
I have Optimum BF 20 mill  absolutely happy with.


----------



## hacklordsniper (Nov 12, 2014)

kadora said:


> sorry not Quantum lathe but OPTIMUM lathe.
> I have Optimum BF 20 mill  absolutely happy with.



I had BF20 mill too, and was happy. I also had 2 Optimum lathes and not quite happy. Their mills are good, lathes not so good.

Now i bought their BF50TC big mill and not so happy experience like with old BF20 mill


----------

