Any suggestions for an affordable wood lathe to start messing with building some handle pieces?

Any of the smaller bench top lathes are pretty good. Stay away from harbor freight. You need a solid machine with some weight behind it. Vibration is not your friend when turning.

Freddwhy (Rapt-Ryte)

Penn State Industries has a good selection of Mini and Midi lathes, with and without the variable speed control.

Andy,
Check out pawn shops, the on line @#$%& sites as well as used tool locations.
Many times you can pick up some used - very high quality pieces of equipment for very reasonable prices.

It is really much better to buy a used piece of quality gear; compared to buying a new piece of less quality gear.

Good luck
Roger

p.s.
Manyh of the home building big box stores have some starter lathes for very little money that will be more than sufficient to handle any of your handle turning needs.
Handle turning is very very light duty work for a lathe. So, you don't need a 500 lb lathe to turn beautiful handles.

I use a Rikon Mini lathe and really like it.

I also have a Rikon. Mine came with the variable speed option which is nice. If you are in the SE Michigan/Northern Ohio area I know where you can pick up a really nice full size Dunlap/Craftsman lathe for fairly cheap.

Gary - I wish I was...SE South Dakota though. Thanks for the comment though.

Do a Google search on laths Used and new

Bill - willierods.com

Many of the lathes in the $400 price range are so good, that it's almost unwise not to at least spend that much. If you spend much less, you're apt to be upgrading in short order. And if you do spend $400 on a lathe right at the outset, it's good enough that you may never need to upgrade.

Do be aware than you can easily drop another $200 on just a good chuck and a couple basic turning tools.

Now having said all this, if I was going to try and do this dirt cheap, I'd buy the Grizzly hobby lathe which connects to a power drill. It's not much of a lathe per se, but it'll get your beak wet for under $75.

.................

Here's the link to the grizzly lathe for the drill set up.

[www.grizzly.com]

I use a Grizzly drill powered lathe. It works just fine for me.

David Dosser
Coshocton, OH

Andy, I have a PSI TCLPROVS Turncrafter Pro VS Variable Speed Wood Lathe with an unused bed extension that I am thinking about selling. It has only been used to turn cork and foam.

I am in Alexandria, MN. Shoot me an email at chuck@woodsmenrods.com if interested.

Note: If you click on Control Center you can edit your profile and add/unhide your email address if desired. Then members can send you an email.

Chuck

_________________________________________
"Angling is extremely time consuming.
That's sort of the whole point." - Thomas McGuane

The Turncrafter Pro is a solid starter lathe. I have one (belts, not variable) and it works great for turning cork, reel seats, handles, etc. If you can get the used one from Chuck (great name for a lathe guy) you will be a happy boy. Plan to spend around $200 for chucks, mandrels, etc. If you are going to turn any wood, you'll need turning tools, at least a spindle gouge, a parting tool and probably a skew chisel.

Happy turning.

Terry

Turner ain't a bad name for a lathe guy either! ;)

_________________________________________
"Angling is extremely time consuming.
That's sort of the whole point." - Thomas McGuane

Enough with the mutual admiration already!!

Be safe and happy turnings!!

Roger

i've got about 150 bucks into my grizly benchtop with a 3 jaw chuck. nice unit and price is great. had mine for 3 years, no complaints.

Regards,
-Justin

Grizzly has a good selection and most items have customer reviews on them. Seems there stuff is getting better all the time.

I have the Grizzly Hobby Lathe and it worked ok after a few modifications which were support issues. I bought a cheap drill which didn't run true and caused me some problems. Make sure you have a true running drill. Bill

After some email communication with Andy I learned that he is interested in working with wood.

_________________________________________
"Angling is extremely time consuming.
That's sort of the whole point." - Thomas McGuane

Thanks for clairifying Chuck

Not just wood but really everything although wood is most intriguing to me at this point but I've been doing a lot of hard water rods so you don't have a lot of other things to mess with besides the handle. Thanks for the suggestions from everyone though!

Andy