John,

There is a great deal of difference between wood and metal lathes. Besides cost (a metal lathe with similar capacity to my wood lathe would cost around $10000 more than I paid for my wood lathe), metal lathes run slower (wood turning is best done at RPM's higher than most metal operations), tend to get gunked up with wood shavings/dust and finish materials, the tail stocks tend to be less robust on a metal lathe, tooling and headstock/tailstock tapers are different and mostly incompatible, headstock bearings on wood lathes made for turning bowles are more stout than most metal lathes, as well as metal lathes not having a banjo/tool rest setup that can handle the freeform work typically done on wood lathes. However, the precision factor of metal lathes does make them very useful for some tasks with wood. There are some cross slide setups that are available for small wood lathes that would be useful for making reel seat inserts and such. I've been considering obtaining a small metal lathe for turning some wood parts. There are some paternmaker wood lathes that would be very useful for turning out precision parts. Myself, I'm having my local used tool purveyor (he has lot's of industrial equipment) look for a metal lathe (something like an Atlas 6") with a messed up head stock, gearing, or motor. I'll then have him cut the head off and I'll just use the bed rails, crossslide, and tool post for my lathe (grind the feet flat, weld on to some steel, and make a mounting system to hold it on my bed ways).

I have a wood lathe,too, it sits on it's head in the garden shed. I have no touble turning grips on my metal lathe, I find that a rasp then varying grits of sandpaper work best for me, tools of any kind just seem to tear chunls out of the cork. The main reason I bought the metal lathe instead of turning grips separately on my wood lathe is that i need the accuracy to cut ferrule stations on my bamboo rods. I also occaisonally play with the idea of makiing my own caps and rings and possibly ferrules, but I have so far successfully gotten over it. I like a perfect cylinder for my inserts enough that I'll pass on the enjoyment of turning it freehand, I have enuf to do in my shop time to not afford the learning time it would take to gain the skill with a gouge to make a seat that suited me.
john