Atlas or Grizzly

[jcullen]

Have a chance to buy a 6x18 Atlas/Craftsman lathe in excellent condition app. 35 years old, or a new Grizzly G4000 9x19 lathe.
I'm not a gunsmith, nor plan to do any gunsmithing at this time,but I would like to add a lathe to my reloading stuff.TIA

 

[MGP]

I have Grizzly G9972Z 11X26 and have done really nice work with it i will be chambering my first AR15 barrel with a 5C Collet chuck first i have to make the adapter plate to fit it to my lathe. Mike

 

[flatlander]

I've been playing on Dad's old Atlas since the 7th grade,1963), mostly turning aluminum, as the old machine doesn't seem rigid enough to do much with steel. I have prepped many thousands of cases with it, putting whatever tool I was using in the 3-jaw, and setting shoe boxes across the ways to hold cases. It sure beats using a drill press or cordless drill by a long shot, but even replacing the old lantern toolpost with a more rigid and much easier to use quick change toolpost hasn't done that much for the machine's rigidity when it comes to working with steel.

If I were going to spring for a lathe - whether to do gunsmithing or not - I'd certainly want to go with a machine with the capacity/rigidity to actually do something besides putter around with aluminum. You may not be interested in chambering or fitting barrels at this point in time, but it's unlikely that you will be satisfied with the old Atlas for long, regardless. Once you get a feel for machining metal, I can practically guarentee that you'll want to learn to do more with a lathe than the Atlas is capable of. There are a lot of neat reloading accessories/tools that can be made on a decent lathe - so why buy a machine that's going to limit what you can do, and you're probably going to wind up replacing sooner rather than later?

Grizzly's G4003G lathes are getting a lot of positive press over in the Gunsmithing forum on BRCentral - you might want to read through a few of the posts over there. I bought a heavy Jet GH1340W lathe a few years ago when I got into gunsmithing, and have been very satisfied with the work that can be done with it. However - now that Grizzly has its two gunsmithing lathes available - if I were starting over again, I'd go with one of them.

 

[mrjdasr]

had a grizzly 9x19 afew years ago. practically useless as is. i completely remodeled the whole pulley/drive system to make it usable. gave it away & bought a 12x36 belt drive grizzly and couldn't be happier. have chambered and threaded several barrels for savage & remington. all of the barrels will shoot under 1/2 moa all the way out to 600 yds & 1 moa at a 1000 yds[when the wind don't blow]
so save your money, & stay away from the tinker toy lathes

 

[coolt]

As important as the lathe is the tooling. Make sure you buy everything you'll ever need when you buy the lathe. Things like steady rests, collet adapters etc. may fit only that lathe and when the distributer changes suppliers you're done. Without tooling a lathe is just a shop ornament.

 

[Clark]

I have:
1) 1938 Atlas 12x36, I have threaded and chambered ~5 rifles on it.
2) a 2001 Grizzly 6x10, I have chambered 2 pistols barrels on it.
3) a 1967 Clausing 5914 12x36, I have threaded and chambered ~10 rifles on it.

My brother has a 2001 Jet 13x40 that I have used many times.
I was there when we chambered threaded and chambered ~10 different rifles.

The Atlas is the nicest, but my brother's higher skill and standards alway makes his gunsmithing best.

My Grizzly is such a piece of junk that it is a joke. They could not be in buisness if all their lathes were that bad. I know that the saw blades and router bits from Grizzly were low quality 20 years ago. I use that lathe to drive an arbor with a wire wheel on it.

The Atlas is not stiff, and trying to take off .010", will sometimes only take off .008", and then a couple more passes are needed to take off the last .002". Very accurate work can be done, but it takes a while.

 

[3sixbits]

I know what the best is, I just could not afford the best when I bought my old South Bend Heavy 10"X40". Looking back after all these years, I was glad I didn't have the money to buy the best.

By the time a guy gets tooled up and gets the old girl where you want and how you want it, MAN you have some real money tied up in them. If I was going to do a lathe just for a setup for working ctgs, I go with a small bench top chink lathe, I would sure want something that had a collet closure with it. I think brand new, even with are nearly wall paper money you could get by for under a grand and be tooled up the way you want.

Lots of web sites devoted to the care and feeding of the little chink machines, how to make them better. Heck, I think about them every time I need to make small screws and pins. Or just to turn a bunch of necks. I think it would be kinda of fun.

My old lathe is really set-up to do one thing and one thing only. Barrel work, I don't feel like screwing around with a machine that works for me, that takes a lot of time and money to get, "JUST RIGHT".

 

[GerryM]

I had a atlas 12 inch with all of the tooling/
It was a pretty good lathe can't complain.
the big problem was spindle hole size.
Right now Grizzly has 2 models of gunsmith lathes.
One is around 3k the other about 6 k . They are built special for gunsmiths in their new catalogue.
Of course they are chinese'''' I had one opportunity to use a Monarch 10 x 36 the problem was tooling.
Today i would give the grizzly a try again.
buying a used old American lathe can get pretty pricey
Having it all re built. either way be careful buying used equipment. I hope this helps gerry