Internal threading tool/ remington 700

Leeroy said:
Fair enough Jerry.. Good quality gear certainly makes life much easier i agree..:)
You obviously have many years in the trade and i'm sure this question has been asked many times before, but if you were to buy a new lathe for smithing work, with a $20K budget, what would it be? (genuine question)


Cheers
Lee
Click to expand...

WOW, the $20k opens up a lot of pages of items to buy.

First, do you intend the 20k for just a lathe, or, lathe and tooling, or, an reasonably equipped shop including a mill, et. al.?

Secondly, does your wife know about this (joke)?

The best choice for a gunsmithing, mainly, lathe is still the old standby that is STILL used by many of the top gunsmiths today, and that the "Great Gunsmith" Seeley Masker had THREE of, the American made South Bend Heavy 10. Seeley's son, Gerry, still has all three BTW. There were tens of thousands of them made, so even though they are out of business, parts are still available.

Several appear on eBay on a regular basis

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HEAVY-10-SO...316?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3aa624f9fc

You will find some most times on craigslist.

As to SBL H10 in acceptable condition, just like looking under the hood of a used car, you can tell. For a really great one expect to pay up to about $7,500. For one suitable for gunsmith work probably as low as $2,500. If one is offered by a machinery dealer, and it has been repainted, look it over really close.

As to the current crop of ChiCom offerings I don't know. Made in Japan. probably several.

When South Bend Lathe shut down, LeBlond/Makino had a sample made in Taiwan and offered it at about $22,000 but that deal fell through. A US company, Grizzly, offers several of the ChiCom machines that carry the South Bend name but I personally would not recommend any of the ones I've seen for what I would expect to be of toolmaker quality. This was in the mid-era of Turn Off America!! You must remember that our hero GW Bush's last 3 months in office the US was loosing 800,000 jobs/month. So much for "free trade" NAFTA,GATT, now TPP is being voted on.....

There are still some used Monarch 10EE's around but a Monarch factory rebuild will sell for about $85K or more and most of them have a spindle bore too small for barrel work.

The SBL H10 sold in its last days for about $18.5K. The other two top tool room quality lathes the 10EE and one other brand Hardinge sold in the $100k price range. Clausing MADE a suitable model but ICR the model numbers. The Monarch and the Hardinge were so expensive because a spindle bearing pac was about $19k in 1995 when I sent some to Monarch/Sidney for rebuilds.

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Thanks for the detailed reply Jerry..

I can certainly see why you would be recommending the South bend heavy 10 or the Monarch 10EE.. Just looking at their design and sheer weight of these machines tell me they are going to make an accurate cut! One of the issues i find with the more modern designed lathes is the flimsy "box" type headstock design. Looking at the Monarch 10EE is easy to see how much more rigid and vibration damping one of these is going to be.

I would happily spend $20K on a NEW machine no problems (ok well just don't tell my wife ;)), but i'm not too keen on a second hand machine simply because i am unlikely to find anything local that's still in good shape, and i have little to no time for travel to inspect either.

One of the main issues for me when looking at a new lathe has been the spindle bore dia. I have seen some very nice tool room lathes for around the right money, with a similar design to the Monarch 10EE, but they always seem to have too small a spindle bore or are just too big for my small shop.
I do all of my barrel work through the headstock, and the majority of my clients are long range BR / F Open shooters so barrels up to and including 1.5" are common.. I even see the odd 2" dia barrel on the unlimited BR guns.

I've yet to see a high end lathe that is not too big or too long in spindle length, but still has a large enough spindle bore. Once you get into the range of machines with a 2.125" bore, they are a too long to do shorter barrels.
Having two lathes would be the obvious solution, but i just don't have the room.
I could live with a 1.625" bore though and make a secondary headstock that sits on the bedway with a 2.25" bore.. (this is what i currently use).
My current lathe is a Taiwanese made machine similar to a Precision Mathews 12"x36" (actually the same machine just re-badged). I have been very happy with this machine and it has produced it's fair share of winning barrels. Still, i am always trying to improve my equipment as the money becomes available.


Cheers
Lee
 
Lee, since Australia is not a highly industrialized country I can see your problem, but first, what issues are you having with your existing lathe and why would not another like it from Taiwan not be suitable. It looks like you are going to have to import whatever you buy.

My first suggestion would be to get another lathe just like you have unless you have dislikes about it. My next suggestion would be to look in the Japanese market to see what they have. I have bought, for Kodak, many Mazak machine tools made in Japan and they were of the very best quality. Lathes of suitable design for gunsmithing? I was not looking for those features at the time. The last conventional engine lathe I bought was a Monarch 60 x 228 with an 85 hp spindle.

Here in the US, when the EPA came along, thank you Nixon, we were forced out of making quality machine tools. We have a group running our domestic and international policy now that is intent on making us a nation of slaves to them and their evil agenda. This is why we only make bombs now, bombs suitable for bombing schools and hospitals!!!! The average Joe and Jane here now don't seem to have an issue with this so.....

But, hey, we were told in the 1970's the US was to become a service society. We didn't realize we were to serve hamburgers and pizzas. Nixon opened up Communist China in the '70's and Clinton gave them Most Favored Nation status later. At least this degradation of what was the most progressive nation on the planet was a bi-partisan effort.

Rant, of. Anyhow good luck.

Visiting the US Mazak site it appears they only have sophisticated CNC. I know, visiting my old shop recently we had several of the Integrex line. Some, multi-axis, capable fo turning and boring heat exchanger tube sheets as large as 108" diameter and containing up to 250 bored holes.

http://www.hexoloy.com/product-applications/heat-exchanger-tubing

https://www.mazakusa.com/machines/process/turning/


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