Recommended Lathe

[reverend]

I am interested in learning to chamber and fit barrels. I have no experience but am hoping to learn. I have an experienced gunsmith willing to teach me.

I would like to do this just for myself now, but probably would be interested in gun smithing to supplement my income and interests when I retire, soon I hope.

Any suggestions for an appropriate lathe? I've been looking at Grizzly model #'s G4003G and G0509G, both are marketed as gunsmiths lathes. There are many models available, is there any advantage to these "gunsmiths lathes" or they similar to the other lathes? What are important factors to look for in a lathe? Please excuse my naivety.

I have two books, "The complete illustrated guide to precision rifle barrel fitting, By John L. Hinnant 3rd edition and The gunsmith machinist by Steve Acker. Any other suggestions?

Thanks for your time

John

 

[reedmosser]

I bought a new Jet 13x40 jet geared head lathe for gunsmithing. i am very happy with it. Easy to use and will hold a tolerance tighter than I can. Threading is also very easy. I used many old clausing southbends in school and they were much sloppier and harder to use. They were very old though my 2 cents

 

[Preacher]

Plus 1 on the JET-13x40, it's a sweet runner, very accurate, and nice and quite to boot.
I still have my old 10x24 P JET that was purchased new in the late 70's
and that is what convinced me to buy another JET.................

Mike Ratigan also uses a JET-13x40 and you all know how he shoots.....

 

[Rustystud]

Preacher:

I have a Grizzly G9730 but either of the lathes you mention would be nice.

I have a couple of suggestions since I am about 35 years ahead of you on the learning curve.

Go to a local community college and take Machining 101 and 102. Also go to a couple of the NRA Gunsmithing short courses under your belt. Make your own tooling and jigs in machinig class. It will give you a lot of practice and stock your tool box with invluable tooling.

Read, read, and read some more, keep an open mind, try new things that make sense. Maching is a science of trial and error.
Gunsmithing and machining is evolving daily.

I have approximately 100 books on machining, and gunsmithing some very good some not so good.

You might add John Strananhan's new book, Willis Fowlers book, Mark Stratton's, and James Howe's book. All these authors can be looked up on the internet. There are a wealth of books dating back to the industrial revolution.

Good luck, I am sure I will be asking you how to questions this time next year.

Rustystud

 

[JimmyO]

What do you think about this one?

http://www.grizzly.com/products/G4003G

 

[tmbryant]

The first lathe that I bought was a Jet 13x36 belt drive bench model. It had problems that I eventually worked around. If I used the back gearing, I could not get chatter out of the threads and I would also get chatter in the chamber. I wound up installing a DC drive and DC motor on it so that I could slow it down on the high speed side with the variable speed controller. This got rid of the chatter in the threads and in the chamber. Something about the back gearing was causing the chatter problems. Another problem with the lathe was that you could engage the half nuts on any line on the threading dial and hit the thread if you had a multiple of 8 tpi on what you were threading. For instance, you could hit any line on the thread dial with a 8, 16, 24, 32, 40 or 48 thread pitch. But, the problem was that if you cut an 18 tpi thread, you had to use opposite lines. If you hit a numbered line and then an unnumbered line, your threading tool would miss the thread and try to run down the top of the thread.

What does this have to do with the lathe that you are wanting to get? Make sure that whatever lathe you get will allow you to cut any even thread on any line on the thread dial. A good lathe will allow this. A poor lathe won't do it. Even at that, I used the Jet for 17 years until I replaced it with a Kent TRL model. I chambered lots of good shooting barrels with the Jet in spite of it's idiosyncrasies. Another thing to look for is that the compound should be perpendicular to the lathe bed when the angle is set to zero. You won't find this on many imported lathes. The Jet set to zero when the compound was parallel to the lathe bed. The Kent does the same thing. I wound up scribing a line on the carriage with the Kent to allow me to work off the zero with the compound set perpendicular to the lathe bed. The reason this is important is that you set the compound to 29.5 to 30 degrees off perpendicular when cutting a thread and also set at this angle when cutting a coned breech for a benchrest action,25 degrees for a Bat or Hall). If the compound angle reads zero when it's parallel to the lathe bed, then you have to set the angle to 60 degrees on the scale to cut a thread, which is the same as 30 degrees off the perpendicular). This can be worked around, but it's just easier if it's right when you get the lathe. If it's marked right,then the angle you want to cut is directly read off the scale.

If you are going to do barrel work through the headstock, make sure that the spindle hole is large enough to have some clearance on the largest barrel diameter that you are going to chamber. If you are going to use a steady rest to chamber, make sure that the lathe has at least 36" between centers and 40" would be better. The size of the swing for barrel work isn't that important as lots of good shooting rifles have been chambered using Southbend Heavy 10's that have a 10" swing. But, most generally, the larger swing lathes have a larger spindle hole diameter. Anything much above 16" swing gets to be too much work when changing chucks and moving tailstocks around for doing barrel work.

 

[JimmyO]

Thanks,

A friend of mine suggested buy a good used ?Monarach EE? for around 5-7K. Said I would be much happier in the long run.

j.

 

[tmbryant]

Jimmy, the Monarch 10EE is a good lathe as is a Hardinge HLV. I'd like to have either one. Any barreling you do in either lathe will have to be done with the barrel in the headstock which isn't a problem with me as I prefer doing it that way anyway. 10 EE's don't have a lot of length of the lathe bed and most are on the order of 20" between centers. That pretty well makes them where you can't chamber a barrel using a steady rest. If you are going to use a steady rest, you need at least 36" between centers. Make sure that the spindle hole diameter is large enough through the headstock to allow you to chamber the largest diameter barrel that you would want to chamber.

 

[StephenPerry]

Mike
I bought a re-conditioned Logan 922 a couple years ago. 1 3/4 hole through headstock. No steady rest. 3 & 4 jaw chucks about 22" between centers. I intend to do barreling. Like to upgrade my tool rest with a quick change unit maybe KDK. I have most of the gages I will need. Plan on taking 2 semesters of machine shop at a local JC. Plenty of old barrels to work on. Gonna make some Tuners too.

Stephen Perry
Angeles BR

 

[tmbryant]

Stephen, get an Aloris tool post. I have a DTM on one lathe and an Aloris on the other one. The Aloris is by far the better of the two. They are both BXA sizes and will accept any make of the same size BXA size tool holders. If your lathe is a 9x22, you'll probably need an AXA. If the 922 is just a model number, you'll need the size that fits your swing diameter. I'm using the BXA size on 13" and 15" swing lathes. The lowest price I've seen on a new Aloris tool post is from Enco. I bought tool holders off of ebay as well as new ones from MSC or Enco.