To themayor....
A little over three years ago, I finally got serious about doing my own barreling work, and began looking for a lathe. Let me tell you, there aren't many decent used lathes (of the appropriate size for gunsmithing) out here in western Kansas. Oh, if you buy papers from all the surrounding area towns and watch the classifieds like a hawk, you might eventually find something worth driving to look at, but it quickly became obvious that, if I wanted to get started ASAP (and I did), I was going to have to buy something new. And, as far as I was able to tell, there aren't any new American made lathes available, so these two factors quickly whittled my choices down to buying a new import machine.
I wound up buying a JET GH1340W-1, which is a heavy (just over a ton) 13x40 lathe set up for single phase. The downside is that it's made in mainland China. I paid right at $5K for it, which at the time was about as much as I thought I could afford and still have something left to buy tooling with. IIRC, there were a few Taiwanese machines in the same weight class, but they were all priced at $7K+, so I went with the JET. If I'd have known then what I know now, I'd have either managed to dig up the extra $$$ one of the Taiwanese lathes cost, or saved until I could swing the purchase.
However, we (by 'we', I'm referring to a semi-local JET dealer) have worked through the problems I've had with the JET, including scrapping both the 3 & 4-jaw chucks that came with it, and the chicom single-phase motor. JET replaced the chucks within two days after the dealer called their warranty dept., and the new chucks are just fine. When the OEM main motor crapped out, we tried a bandaid fix of replacing the starter contact points, but they started arcing & sticking again within about 3 days. So, since JET didn't have a direct replacement motor in the country, they offered me up to $300 cash to replace it with whatever I could find locally. I bought a US Motors (made in Mexico) 3hp 3-phase, along with a TECO VFD and had a local electrician come out and wire everything up so I could use the lathe's controls to start/stop/reverse, and so the footbrake & emergency stop would work. I am very pleased with the conversion to a 3-phase motor and with the VFD. After a year of use, I had to snug up the spindle bearing collar to take some play out of the spindle bearings - don't recall how much play there was, but it was too much to be suitable for cutting BR-quality chambers. I also had to make my own spider/cathead to hold the outboard end of barrels being fitted & chambered in the headstock.
I've replaced the OEM toolpost with a Phase II QC post, and have bought 16 extra toolholders for it. Installed a Newall C80 DRO last year - should have ordered the machine with one already installed. After all this, I've got a machine that does good work. My chambers seldom have more than .0001" runout, and the barrels I've fitted & chambered shoot very respectably.
However, while looking at and handling the Grizzly gunsmithing lathes at the SHOT Show, I kinda gritted my teeth, wishing they'd have been available when I was first looking to purchase a lathe. These machines already have QC toolposts, roller tip follow & steady rests, spider, and have precision spindle bearings suitable for toolroom or gunsmithing use. Their tailstocks are matched in height to the spindle center, and feature a socket that allows the use of a torque wrench when locking down to avoid variations in height. The downside is that they're both made in mainland China, and the smaller one (G4003G) doesn't have a wide selection of speeds in the low end of the range for threading. For my purposes, that leaves the 16x40 machine, which would probably satisfy my needs pretty much completely. Another thing I like about the 16x40 is that the spindle length is shorter than my JET's - the shortest barrel I can do through the headstock is about 26".
When it comes to learning how to run a lathe, for someone with no experience, I'd strongly suggest at least a semester of an introductory class at a local JUCO or trade school. If that's not an option, you need to find someone locally who can show you the ropes. There's a huge amount of knowledge & information available on the internet, but until you've got some hands-on experience, most of it is just not going to be real meaningful. A used metal shop textbook would also be helpful, as would subscriptions to "The Home Shop Machinist" and/or "Machinist's Workshop".
