Went Shopping For a Lathe Today

[Mag Man]

Well it was cold and snowy here today and I have 1/2 of my mag work caught up so I desided to go lath shopping today. I called Cummins tools and alls they did was pi$% me off. So I headed out to harbor freight for a small 7x12 mini lathe. Well I got to the store they did not stock one so I asked how much the 9x20 big one was and the tag said $799.00 I went to the registore and the manager came up and I said isint that lathe on sale for $699.00 right now, ( I did not know that just wanted to see what he would say) So he says give me a min and started punching numbers in the PC. And says how does $588.00 sound . YE HA sounds good to me. All 400#s of that bad boy is sitting in the back of my truck in the garage right now. One of these days I will get about three big boys to unload it and see whats in the box I guess.LOL
HAVE A GOOD ONE JON

[Lurker Carl]

Excellent! Nothing like an unexpected bargin. Good luck getting it off the truck!

[beaconlight]

Luck jon

Bill

[allenlook]

Harbor Freight *always* gives me a nice discount

If anyone is in the market for a mini lathe, just be aware that the Harbor Freight 7x12 is really only a 7x10, whereas all of the other ones, Homier, Cummins, etc. are truly 7x12 or even 7x14. Stay away from their 8x10 as the demand for it has been low and therefore so has the rate of improvement - the 7's have come a long way in the last few years.

They are *all* made in the same Chinese factory!

I also bought the mini-mill and the two of them combined are GREAT! I love watching the chips fly.

There are some great sites on the web - littlemachineshop.com and I think mini-lathe.com are two of the best.

I got my mini-lathe from Cummins, and it was smashed when it got here so they sent a replacement, and that one looks pretty beat up too... They have a tool show in town today and tomorrow so I am going to call and ask if I can take the lathe in to the show instead of crating it up and sending it back - but I am guessing they will say "no" for some stupid reason, and they will miss out on me going to the show and buying some more tools. I also bought a compressor at their show a few years back and it was broken inside in several places, and the copper airline from the compressor head into the tank was too short and kept coming undone, so I had to do some welding on the brackets and some copper compression work - altogether not worth the "savings" I expected to get.

Cummins seems to be a Chinese-product dumper, whereas Harbor Freight and Homier at least try to brand their products and to pick and choose some of the better quality components - I think the leftovers go to Cummins.