Now the Serious Spending can begin

I’ve wanted a metal lathe for, ooohhh, probably 8 or 9 years. I half-heartedly began building one, but after some industrial espionage (delivery trunk rolled over my furnace) I gave that up.

What I really want is something like the awesome old South Bend 9″, but I haven’t saved up the $ for that yet. In the meantime, I thought I’d get my toes chopped offwet with a smaller, crappier and cheaper Craftsman 109. Mine isn’t in quite as nice a shape as that one (yet!) but that’s actually kind of by design. Fixing it up and training on a junker are all part of the plan.

Here it is more or less as I bought it:

And here I’m in the process of adding a countershaft for more granular speed control, including a much slower lowest speed. Was about 900 RPM(!), now hopefully about 100 RPM (actually, closer to 300 RPM but that’s OK for now).

In between those photos I’ve already learned a ton by fixing/adjusting the tailstock, lead screw, cross slide and all the gibs.