Laguna Revo 18-36 Bearing Replacement

[tom lucas]

Richard, OneWay is certainly a quality lathe, but by categorically characterizing the purchasers of imported lathes in negative light as you have, you have impugned every woodturner that doesn’t own either a vintage North American made lathe or a Robust or OneWay. That is a pretty broad brush.

I have been wonderfully pleased with my Laguna 1836.

If the price of entry to this sport were only in the range of Robust or Oneway or Vicmarc, many of us would not be participating at all. That hurts every turner. Someday, maybe I'll own a Oneway.....

However, I think 4 years is far too short for the money spent, even on off-shore makes. Production turning, that would be a different matter altogether. When I was buying I seriously wanted to buy the Laguna. Beautiful looking machine with nice features.... on the surface. But then I kept seeing all these issues, and I doubt that the total number of units sold was very high. That scared me away. They have some work to do on the quality control front, IMO - a bit of a crap shoot with them. So I went with Grizzly instead, reasoning that while there were some issues in early models, the number of units sold by that big "retailer" was likely very high. Meaning the percentage of units with issues was probably very small. Besides, most of the issues reported were design flaws, not inferior parts. Most of those were designed out in newer models, like mine. And I can buy 3 of my lathe for the cost of a single Oneway. Still, I think overall the Laguna lathes are good, as are lathes from Powermatic, Jet, Nova, and Rikon. Harvey is a relatively new player that is likely quite good too. Time will tell on them.

To the OP, good luck with the bearing replacement, if that is the problem. It's not that big of a deal, cost wise, and you'll learn a thing or two about your lathe along the way.

[Barry McFadden]

Richard, OneWay is certainly a quality lathe, but by categorically characterizing the purchasers of imported lathes in negative light as you have, you have impugned every woodturner that doesn’t own either a vintage North American made lathe or a Robust or OneWay. That is a pretty broad brush.

I have been wonderfully pleased with my Laguna 1836.

I agree with John 100%..... have had my 18/36 going on 4 years now and it has been great.....

[Richard Coers]

Richard, OneWay is certainly a quality lathe, but by categorically characterizing the purchasers of imported lathes in negative light as you have, you have impugned every woodturner that doesn’t own either a vintage North American made lathe or a Robust or OneWay. That is a pretty broad brush.

I have been wonderfully pleased with my Laguna 1836.

That was not my intent John, I was taught to buy quality as a young farm boy where machinery didn't cost money, it made money. Because you can't make money when it's broken down. I don't really care what anyone buys, I'm just passing on information that a quality machine can last a lifetime. And at the age of 68, I'm only planing on the Oneway lasting another 15 years or so. I'm thrilled you and others love the Laguna lathe. But I have a hint that many will still aspire to own a Oneway or Robust in the future.

[Mike Goetzke]

I would think that the bearings should last more than 4 years. My PM 3520A lasted 5+ years of my bowl turning, and I turned without the tailstock, which relieves a lot of pressure on the tailstock. I was able go get mine repaired at a local shop, including buying parts locally, for less than I could buy the replacement parts for from PM. My bearings were kind of squeaky, but I could also feel the spindle being 'rough'.

robo hippy

I bought a new 3520B few years back and after about 6-months of light turning it developed a squeak. First thing I thought of was spindle bearing but I isolated it down to the motor bearing. PM sent me a replacement motor but first made me show a pic of the original motor tag cut up. Well, when I received the new one I tore into the old motor and found the issue. Looks like the flash on the internal cooling fins wasn't cleaned off and these shavings got into the bearings. For about $15 and couple hours work I had a back-up motor.