Legacy Ornimental Mill Vs Lathe

[Kevin Hogfeldt]

Does anyone have any experience and advice on Legacy vs Lathe. I have seen the Legacy but have not used either. Leagcy looks very versital tool.

Kevin

[Alex Elias]

For what I have seen as versatile as it looks is not meant to do what a lathe does and the other way around (at least the smaller one) it seems more for decorations and ropes and ornamental turning but I cant see how you would hollow a bowl.
For me they are two different monsters.

[Jim Underwood]

The Legacy is quite similar in concept as a rose engine. It is very versatile as you've said. I even saw a shallow bowl/platter complete with flutes today at the Woodworking Show in Atlanta. So apparently it can be done. They've added quite a few accessories to this machine.

That being said, the lathe is quite a different animal. You must develop skills to handle tools applied to a spinning piece of wood, whereas the Legacy utilizes a mechanically guided spinning bit applied to a slowly moving spindle. The Legacy is not really a lathe, it's an "ornamental mill".

They are both great tools, it just depends on what you want to do...

[Jim Becker]

The Legacy setups are excellent at what they do, but I would not consider them a "lathe" in the context that we most often speak about such things. They are fabulous for things like architectural mill work, stair-parts, and some decorative work. And yes, you can do some "turning" with them.

Many of the folks I actually know that have bought the machines, however, found they didn't use them enough to justify the investment long term.

[Wayne Cannon]

What do you want to do? They are very different animals with only a tiny bit of overlap. In general, I would suggest that a lathe is a more general tool and therefore better addition to your shop, but if you need it, the Legacy is hard to beat (e.g., fluted turnings, spiral shafts or rosettes, etc.

The Legacy would take you much, much longer to do (planning, setup, and execution) things that are very easy on the lathe, and curved profiles require creation, mounting, and calibration of a pattern.

The lathe simply cannot most of the things that the Legacy ornamental mill is designed to do most easily.

There are jigs for mounting a stationary router on the bed of a lathe where there is definite overlap.

[Howard Boehm]

I have the 1200 mill. From the first time I saw the video CD they send you I had to have this. All my projects have something I made on the Legacy. Spiral columns, fluted and round pieces. Twisted ropes and rosettes.

They have now added a CNC attachment thats makes the mill a 5 axis CNC machine. very impressive videos on there site as well. http://www.legacywoodworking.com/

It is not a lathe per se. but you will want this.