Central Machinery Wood Lathe

If you turn anything approaching 10 inches in diameter or beyond, the lathe bogs down and you need to take very light cuts. Even in a soft, green wood. Even if you were wanting to go larger than that, you can't as the slowest speed is 600 rpm, making anything than, say, 12 inches unsafe to turn. Another issue is the locking levers. The lathe came with three (one on the banjo for the tool rest, one on the banjo extension, and one for the quill). Two of the three are stripped out, both on the banjo. It is impossible to lock the tool rest sufficiently without stripping them eventually. Without replacing these, it makes the banjo extension useless, which also makes the swiveling head stock useless. A few minor issues: The indexing on the head-stock swivel has quite a bit of slop. Whenever you turn it back over the bed, you must remove any faceplate work and bring up the tailstock to get everything centered before you lock it down. The live center that comes with the lathe has a bit of wobble to it, but this can be replaced. All-in-all, I would recommend this lathe to start out with. It has been a great introduction for me and caused me to start calling myself a woodturner rather than a woodworker. The lathe isn't perfect by any means, but is enough to get me going before I can afford something better.