Just bought a wood lathe for 69.99 from Harbor Freight.
14"X40" bed, 1/2 hp with sander attachment and table with mitreslide,tailstock complete.Just thought that this was a ridiculous price, I don't know how long the sale will last.

Not sure of the policy's of this sight ,if this gets edited, then I will certainly understand.

Blaine....
I bought the same lathe at Christmas time, and I agree with you....hard to go wrong for that price.

I did spent a fair amount of time trying to find an adjustable chuck that will fit in on the spindle....all with no success. I am told the thread pattern is 19MM. If anyone knows a source, please let me know.

I ended up (based on a suggestion from Tom K.) fitting a mandrel into a piece of 2X2 and using the wood end on the lathe center. So far it works pretty good. I had a local machine shop make 3 steel rod arbors (1/4", 3/8" & 1/2"). They charged me $20 and I had no shipping.

I have turned several cork handles and am very pleased with the results to date. The machine is pretty "plain Jane" but has plenty of power for making a lot of cork dust.
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Steve Swadinsky

Just have the same machine shop make an adapter from the spindle to whatever mount is on the chuck you prefer. I bought a cheap wood lathe that had a 3/4 standard thread spindle. Had the machinist make me an adapter that screwed on on one end and had a morse taper male end to press on to an old drill press chuck I already had. It will hole up to a 5/8 arbor, which is as big as I need for the rods I build.

Ray Alston

Busy Bee Tools in Canada has 3 and 4 jaw scroll checks for wood lathes. You need to check their online catalog for the correct center adapter for your headstock spindle. I have one for my Jet mini-lathe and it works fine, although the chuck is somewhat large in comparison to the overall size of the lathe.
The 3 Jaw Chuck is part number B124 and is on sale now.

www.busybeetools.ca

Thanks Ray, Rick, and Steve, I'm just tickled to have this lathe,i've not seen this much cork dust(cough....cough) in quite some time. My search has begun on the chucks and mandrels. When it's all said and done, the investment will still be ridiculous.

Blaine, be warned, this whole process will probably cost a lot more than several top end rods. But is worth every dollar. I've had a blast learning how to build rods, tooling, grips, and all the peripheral stuff. My shop is shrinking in available space, but growing in value and versatility.
I'm going to be making mandrels for turning grips this weekend with a friend who has a machine lathe. I'll share my experience when we're done. If it's worth while I may make several and offer them to folks that need them.

Rick,

I'm duly warned,Let me know how it goes,

I bought the same lathe recently and was going to look for a chuck but haven't started yet.I'd love to hear what you end up doing about the chuck if you don't mind.Thanks and good luck...........Kyle

For the chuck: Look at the Penn State Industries catalog, either online or they print a copy.
They sell chucks with seperate adaptors that will fit almost anything. If they do not have one to fit that lathe (and I bet they do) they also sell blank adaptors. So you could buy the chuck and the blank adaptor and all you would have to pay a machine shop to do is to thread the adaptor.

Penn State sells 2 lines of chucks. They have standard 3 jaw in the larger sizes and they sell a little scroll chuck for the min-lathes. I use the little scroll chuck when I am chucking blanks directly in the chuck. I do a thread wrap or good tape job under where I am going to chuck and padd the chuck jaws with thin rubber sheets.