Steve Toth
05-11-2011, 2:17 PM
Hello all,
Long time forum reader first time poster. Figured I would introduce my self. I'm a middle school tech-ed teacher. I teach a little wood working, a little graphic arts, and everything else in between. I am looking to purchase a lathe for myself for a small summer business venture I am starting. My life long passion has been baseball and I have been hand turning bats on lathes for quite sometime. I have finally decided to purchase a lathe for myself for the sole purpose of turning baseball bats. They are quite litterally the only thing I will be turning on this lathe. I am absolutely impressed by the amount of craftsmanship displayed here by all of you master turners. The bowls and other large objecs simply put are AMAZING. They are just not my cup of tea as a project. At this point of my business I just can't spend more than 1000 on my lathe and have startup capital for other necessities. I already have a vega duplicator so my lathe needs to be able to accept that. In addition all of the blanks I will be turning are already round so i can't imagine the stresses will be that great.
I have been leaning towards the grizzly g0462. From everything I have read it is a good lathe for spindle work (which is basically what a bat is, a VERY VERY simple spindle). It seems the main reason people do not like this lathe is it can not turn bowls or out of balance blanks with the high low end speed.
I missed out on a great deal on a Jet 1442, which is really the lathe that I want, I just can't spend the 1300 on it at this point.
I would love to hear some recomendations on what lathe you guys feel would be good for turning bats and can accept the vega d-36 duplicators. Maybe I don't even need something as good as the grizzly for the simple shapes i'm doing. I just don't know. Please help out a novice with some feedback.
THANKS A BUNCH!!!
Steve
Long time forum reader first time poster. Figured I would introduce my self. I'm a middle school tech-ed teacher. I teach a little wood working, a little graphic arts, and everything else in between. I am looking to purchase a lathe for myself for a small summer business venture I am starting. My life long passion has been baseball and I have been hand turning bats on lathes for quite sometime. I have finally decided to purchase a lathe for myself for the sole purpose of turning baseball bats. They are quite litterally the only thing I will be turning on this lathe. I am absolutely impressed by the amount of craftsmanship displayed here by all of you master turners. The bowls and other large objecs simply put are AMAZING. They are just not my cup of tea as a project. At this point of my business I just can't spend more than 1000 on my lathe and have startup capital for other necessities. I already have a vega duplicator so my lathe needs to be able to accept that. In addition all of the blanks I will be turning are already round so i can't imagine the stresses will be that great.
I have been leaning towards the grizzly g0462. From everything I have read it is a good lathe for spindle work (which is basically what a bat is, a VERY VERY simple spindle). It seems the main reason people do not like this lathe is it can not turn bowls or out of balance blanks with the high low end speed.
I missed out on a great deal on a Jet 1442, which is really the lathe that I want, I just can't spend the 1300 on it at this point.
I would love to hear some recomendations on what lathe you guys feel would be good for turning bats and can accept the vega d-36 duplicators. Maybe I don't even need something as good as the grizzly for the simple shapes i'm doing. I just don't know. Please help out a novice with some feedback.
THANKS A BUNCH!!!
Steve