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Post by Vektor on Apr 12, 2021 2:56:58 GMT -5
SABERSMITH’S LATHE BUYER GUIDE
For us saberbuilding enthusiast, a lathe is an essential tool for creating hilts. Saber hilts are most often cylindrical, so it would be very difficult to create this kind of items with any other tool out there. Lathe is also extremely versatile tool to have, and working with lathe counts as fun hobby on itself as well.
When I was searching information for my first lathe purchase, around 2007 or 2008, the internet was full of tool elitists who most often worked professionally in machining, and considered anything smaller than five-digit priced tool room precision lathe utter rubbish. I even heard a story about one machinist, who quit his job because he had spent six months just centering a workpiece into lathe chuck perfectly. Obsessive precision? Snobbery? A saberbuider craves not these things. And we can go really far with the so-called benchtop “hobby” lathes. While I’m not a professional machinist, I have had a number of lathes in my workshop since 2008, so I gathered my experience with them in this post, hoping it might provide some help for aspiring saber builders, going through the same process I did 13 years ago.
Chapter 1: The Chinese connection
One of the most popular alternatives in this class is the Chinese 7x12 “mini lathe”. They’re offered in many different variations, different brands (usually named by your favourite hardware store) and different colors, but they’re all basically the same body and they come from same manufacturer, SIEG in China. SIEG makes a wide range of other lathes as well, from very tiny micro lathes to fair sized CNC machining centers. I have owned now three different SIEGs, a small C1 sized bench lathe, their biggest CNC lathe and now the latest acquisition is a 7x12 (mine actually has 16” long bed, though). I also have had a SIEG-originated X-2 mini mill for few years.
I’d probably discard the smallest C0 and C1 lathes, because in that size and price segment there are better alternatives. The C1 I had was alright for beginner, but soon ran out of capacity for saberbuilding purposes and accessories are far more few than for bigger, more versatile C2 (7x12). Also thread cutting with this C1, albeit possible, was VERY cumbersome.
The bigger C2, more commonly known 7x12, 7x14 or other 7xXX variation, is actually very good machine for our purposes. The capacity, as long as you go for 4” chuck, is good, and the weight is just fine for eliminating most of the vibration. Mine is actually 7x16” version, because the dealer had one on sale, but even though I don’t need the extra length very often the added weight amends a lot for stability.
These C2s also usually come with generous kit. You get power feed, top slide, lots of accessories like changewheels for thread cutting included. I only needed a good set of tools, tailstock drill chuck and a bull nose pipe center (which I had already and trust me, you'll appreciate one in your arsenal too) as additional accessories at this point. What would make this set ideal was the availability of large bore 4” chucks, but those are more reserved for bigger chucks and bigger lathes. Other than that, the number of accessories for these machines is satisfactory, and finding information online is easy too.
When addressing the problems in these 7x12” lathes, one thing arises above everything else: electronics are usually shotty. The speed control board in my C1 broke only after 6 months. It broke the very first week in my X-2 mini mill. The first thing to go in my SIEG CNC lathe was electronics (automatic tool changer switch board) and the speed controller in my current C2 already has a bit of alarming behaviour, only after a month of use. New speed controller PCB costs just over 100 bucks, which isn’t terrible, but given the short lifespan of that component, feels a bit redundant cost. And it also consumes your workshop time to replace one.
Also, some of the 7x12” kits come with rather low power motor, so keep your eyes peeled for that detail. Mine has 370W, which is on the low end of the scale, but I have limited my lathe work for just 2 hours per day. I was thinking about converting this lathe into belt fed machine with external motor, but I haven’t got around to that yet, and I’m not sure how I can keep the thread cutting ability after the conversion.
Would I recommend this machine? Yes, if you’re able to score a great package deal with 4” chuck for starters. Then you have saved some cash for upcoming electronic repairs. And you have a delightfully capable lathe on your hands too.
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Post by Vektor on Apr 12, 2021 4:19:33 GMT -5
Chapter 2: Judge me by my size, do you?While there’s no argument over the benefits of bigger and heavier lathes, a smaller one may still turn out more than capable for a hobby saber builder. You may not want to chuck a piece of offcut railroad track in it, but working on a saber hilt can be certainly done. And when we talk about smaller lathes, there’s one particular which deserves more attention: Taig Mk2 Micro Lathe. Or Peatol in UK. I had one of these for almost 10 years and still today it’s hands down the BEST tool I’ve ever had in my ‘shop. I wish I had not sold mine last year, but I was low on cash and about to stop building sabers completely. The Taig may seem a bit small and lightweight, but in reality it’s extremely versatile. With very affordable priced accessories you can increase the versatility even more. I had a milling slide for some minor milling duties, also a ball turning accessory and a custom made live pipe center, just to name a few from my reasonably large range of accessories. The Taig is also very modular, it’s easy to understand, easy to operate and you can pretty much buy all the necessary components separately. You could use a lot of Taig lathe parts to build a Taig micro mill as well. Which brings me to the hands down best feature of the Taig, the reliability. The only part I broke in mine over 10 years, was the motor belt. Well actually quite a few of them (2 per year, give or take), because I was too lazy to align the motor to headstock 100% right. Even so, the belts were about 10 bucks a pop. No rubbish electronics in this little beast, I tell you. In the latest years I do wish I had invested in new bed, though, because the original one had become quite dented. Oh, and the carriage rack shipped one tooth, I could have survived with it but since I ordered some accessories from Peatol I picked up new rack for same postage too. What did I miss in Taig? Well, a bit of extra weight might have been great. And Taig does not cut threads. Not very well, that is. There are some interesting mods around the interwebs for building a thread cutting attachment into Taig lathe, but they require a bit more passion and spare time for the subject. I think I saw a file for 3D printing a Taig thread cutting attachment in Thingiverse some time ago, but no idea how that might work. That said, you can still do saber hilts without threads as well. As an alternative to Taig a Sherline lathe offers nearly the same experience, with some improvements. However, at extra cost, even accessories to Sherline are noticeably more expensive than for Taig. But, you do get a clever thread cutting attachment with manual handwheel for the spindle. I haven’t owned a Sherline personally, but might be tempted at some point to try, if I find extra free workshop space somewhere. Especially a Sherline CNC machining center project would sound interesting…  |
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Post by Vektor on Apr 12, 2021 5:00:05 GMT -5
Chapter 3: Vintage?
Believe it or not, even in days of yore people needed relatively compact sized lathes for smaller jobs. So, when someone talks about “vintage” lathes, they don’t necessarily refer to massive steam-powered, Victorian-era hulks of steel. And a vintage lathe might turn out surprisingly good tool for a saber builder. On paper many of them sound very promising indeed, merging the best of both worlds mentioned in chapters 1 and 2 above. They have good capacity and they’re usually dramatically over-engineered so they’re solid and heavy (thus provide good stability). They even cut threads and come with power feed. Yet the only electric bit is often the motor, so there’s no need to replace fried PCB boards either.
The most common of this kind of lathes is probably South Bend, especially if you’re in US. SBs were copied a lot around the world, I have seen Blomqvist branded ones for sale in Sweden for example. In UK they had the Myfords and in Germany they had a regular cornucopia of alternatives, like Schaublins, Unimats, Weilers and such. I personally owned one South Bend, although briefly (needed a 3-phase motor and my house had far too modern electrical layout for running an old 3-phase machine), but there was no question about it: I liked it very much. It would had been more than great for saberbuilding needs, if I just had been able to run it. I’m hoping I could pick up a British WWI era Drummond lathe some day, for restoration project and casual working too.
What to look for when buying a vintage lathe? Well the general condition, obviously, and the check that the carriage slides over the bed without bumps or jams. Then ask if the package has all the necessary cogs, gears, nuts & bolts left, and if the gears have all their teeth left. Wont be cutting much threads if there’s an important changewheel missing. One of the most important upgrades for vintage lathe would be fitting a modern chuck in it. This may require reshaping the base plate a little bit, but it’s well worth the time spent.
It is very important to remember with these vintage machines, that they are… well, vintage. Modern safety features? Nope. Guarantee that a used machine you bought is fully functional? Little. Finding spare parts or documentation? Depends how deep you’re willing to dig or how deep your pockets are, if you need something custom machined for example. Or do you want the portability of a Taig or 7x12 lathe? Good luck, because most South bends and Myfords tend to be heavier and bigger.
A vintage lathe is very much like many other vintage tools or machinery. It does the job and may run very well, but you need to remember it’s vintage and may need a bit more time & patience to get right. But on the other hand, that time & patience spent wont be left unrewarded. |
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Post by Nerf Herder on Apr 12, 2021 8:17:59 GMT -5
We have a brand called Sherline in NA that sells small-ish lathe/mill combo's. A very good friend of mine who is a professional set-dresser and prop maker in film and tv has used one of their rigs in his arsenal for years now. He swears by the quality, accuracy and mobility of their equipment.
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Post by Obi-Shane on Apr 12, 2021 15:40:55 GMT -5
Going to piggy back off this thread Vektor if you don't mind! I miss the old days of talking shop with you in our years long pm string. You know Vektor , if you have the chance to buy back that SB snag it, those things are SWEEEET and I almost got one. Fitting a modern single phase motor on it shouldn't be too difficult. And I see guys doing it in the vintage lathe groups I'm in all the time. I'd just make sure to get the pulley wheel size and rpm's to match the original motor's specs and you're golden. Heck, I bet the Taig 1/2 hp marathon motor would most likely drive that Southbend just fine. Currently I run a Myford ML7 made in Nottingham England. And I love it. Old has soul I like to say, and using vintage tools gives me great joy and makes what I do more fun. Since I got the Myford, I've "restored" and fitted a gearbox, added riser blocks, a myford Sabers Ruleon QCTP and bought a host of tooling for it. Actually I'm always on the lookout for Myford accessories if anyone is reading this. Looking forward to more lathe talk! |
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Post by Vektor on Apr 12, 2021 23:41:48 GMT -5
Going to piggy back off this thread Vektor if you don't mind! I miss the old days of talking shop with you in our years long pm string. You know Vektor , if you have the chance to buy back that SB snag it, those things are SWEEEET and I almost got one. Fitting a modern single phase motor on it shouldn't be too difficult. And I see guys doing it in the vintage lathe groups I'm in all the time. I'd just make sure to get the pulley wheel size and rpm's to match the original motor's specs and you're golden. Heck, I bet the Taig 1/2 hp marathon motor would most likely drive that Southbend just fine. Currently I run a Myford ML7 made in Nottingham England. And I love it. Old has soul I like to say, and using vintage tools gives me great joy and makes what I do more fun. Since I got the Myford, I've "restored" and fitted a gearbox, added riser blocks, a myford Sabers Ruleon QCTP and bought a host of tooling for it. Actually I'm always on the lookout for Myford accessories if anyone is reading this. Looking forward to more lathe talk! A Myford lathe in South Bend country? Awesome find man! I've been looking for this kind of machine: www.lathes.co.uk/drummond-flatbed-1902-1912/But no one in UK wants to pack it on pallet and ship it overseas. Moot point, though, since currently I have zero workshop space left, with the CNC router being assembled and taking home once ready. I think with my earlier South Bend also suffered from optimistic 6" chuck, I tried to run it off my spare single phase motor (can't remember the rating but it is more powerful than the one I had for Taig) but no success. |
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Post by kagetsume on Apr 13, 2021 18:16:13 GMT -5
I've got a C2 lathe, and I can confirm the electronics in the controller are super-dodgy. It's a great lathe otherwise and mine has a 560watt motor in it. Sherline was also mentioned here and a friend of mine has a Sherline CNC mill. It's a nice piece of equipment! A bit finicky sometimes and requires periodic adjustment on saddle tension, and if the control brass sleeves strip, they're a PIA to replace, but they are replaceable. Every part prettymuch is. One downside of Sherline is at least a series of their system still use a parallel port-based controller, which doesn't work on 64 bit windows platforms; the windows parallel port driver is broken on 64 bit windows. He's got to maintain a 32 bit windows install to run it on Mach 3 software. It's controller is durable, thankfully, and if it does break, it's actually easy to fix. He blew out one of the axis controllers with a shorted motor, and I was able to desolder the dead controller IC and replace it; worked good as new.
Sherline CNC mill and Lathe are is on my list of a tools I plan to get when I get a bigger shop space to work in.
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Post by Obi-Shane on Apr 15, 2021 17:25:29 GMT -5
Going to piggy back off this thread Vektor if you don't mind! I miss the old days of talking shop with you in our years long pm string. You know Vektor , if you have the chance to buy back that SB snag it, those things are SWEEEET and I almost got one. Fitting a modern single phase motor on it shouldn't be too difficult. And I see guys doing it in the vintage lathe groups I'm in all the time. I'd just make sure to get the pulley wheel size and rpm's to match the original motor's specs and you're golden. Heck, I bet the Taig 1/2 hp marathon motor would most likely drive that Southbend just fine. Currently I run a Myford ML7 made in Nottingham England. And I love it. Old has soul I like to say, and using vintage tools gives me great joy and makes what I do more fun. Since I got the Myford, I've "restored" and fitted a gearbox, added riser blocks, a myford Sabers Ruleon QCTP and bought a host of tooling for it. Actually I'm always on the lookout for Myford accessories if anyone is reading this. Looking forward to more lathe talk! A Myford lathe in South Bend country? Awesome find man! I've been looking for this kind of machine: www.lathes.co.uk/drummond-flatbed-1902-1912/But no one in UK wants to pack it on pallet and ship it overseas. Moot point, though, since currently I have zero workshop space left, with the CNC router being assembled and taking home once ready. I think with my earlier South Bend also suffered from optimistic 6" chuck, I tried to run it off my spare single phase motor (can't remember the rating but it is more powerful than the one I had for Taig) but no success. Yeah, an opportunity arose and the stars aligned thanks to Aaron and I had to grab it. Had to pay freight from Michigan to AZ but totally worth it. If I had to do it all over again, it might have also been looking at SB9's locally. Hence my recommendation of grabbing one, especially if it had the gearbox. Hmm, that's bizarre. Most guys are using 1/2hp -1hp motors or less on 9's I think. For example my Myford runs a vintage single phase 1/4HP motor, oilite bushings, GE brand probably from the 70's and it runs it great, the belt will slip before the motor will stall out. What Southbend did you have again? if it was a heavy 10, or 14+ I can see there being issues with a 1hp or less motor maybe. Also, and this is something I don't see mention often but it stuck with me when I was diving down the rabbit hole on these. These vintage lathe's aren't supposed to be started under load, which is why they have the clutch system on them. Motors back in the day aren't designed for constant motor on/off use, so the motor runs while you are on the lath and you engage the clutch as necessary when turning. Probably to prevent motor burnout. That's what I read anyways, and it makes a lot of sense. I remember you looking at those Drummonds back in the day. |
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