Anyone done a DIY midi lathe?

[Luke Pighetti]

I was sitting in my shop thinking about all the cool concrete lathe builds, and I was curious if anyone on here has done a DIY midi/mini lathe? I'm thinking 14"x24" with a nice variable speed reversible motor that doesn't require any belt changes. A really high quality tailstock and indexing headstock. A toolrest that uses the larger post diameter (cant remember what it is right now). A spindle that is 1" x 8 on both sides for outboard turning.

Dunno, I was just thinking about it today when it was that mind wandering part of the day.

Luke

[Bob Bergstrom]

Doesn't look like many have thought about building a lathe as you describe. It seems it may not save much over some very good lathes that are in that size range. Between the banjo, tailstock, indexing, plus a motor that has the power to spin a 14" bowl with only one pulley, the cost factor just keeps going up and up. A good Nova would seem to make a good substitute and have a good resale value.

[Eric Holmquist]

I would tend to think that economies of scale would be against you on this. You can get 14" lathes in the $600 range new. By the time you are done buying all the parts to DIY something this size you are probably similar in cost to just buying one and could probably get something even nicer on the used market.

The price of lathes seems to go up exponentially with size, with bigger components and lower volumes driving the prices. Thus the big DIY bowl lathes can make sense financially as the volumes are low enough for the major manufacturers that you could DIY cheaper, but with the shear volume of 10 to 16 inch lathes on the market, mass production would tend to drive their cost down to the point where it is not practical financially to DIY unless you are making a very specialized design.