New Chinese Girlfriend

December 19th, 2011

Petite and Finely Turned

The new lathe showed up. It’s a Big Dog 7 x 14.

They ship by Fedex, and the lathe was palleted and also enclosed with a cardboard box, styrofoam, and a wooden frame over it. The driver removed everything but the box and put it on the pavement, and I rolled it into the garage on a handtruck. It’s supposed to weigh about 90 pounds, but it maintained an impressive grip on the earth when I tried to lift it. I guess my total lack of an exercise regimen is paying big dividends. I put a little effort into it–something I always prefer not to do–and up it came. It’s sitting on my workbench.

It looks surprisingly nice. Chinese mini-lathes generally come buried in red (appropriately) grease, but this one just had a little cosmoline or something similar on the exposed surfaces. I cleaned it in about five minutes, using a paper towel and alcohol. I’m going to put Vactra on it, since I have no guidelines to the contrary.

I’m very surprised at the quality of the workmanship so far. I haven’t seen any problems yet. My Chinese mill never had any defects, but the parts are all from Taiwan, so that isn’t a big shock. The lathe is pure China. It was made by a company called Real Bull.

I can’t tell you how happy I was to see the steady rest and follower rest sitting on the ways. I still have no rests for my Clausing. The other day, a 12″ Clausing rest sold on Ebay for about $480, which shows you how ridiculous parts prices are. A rest for a 7″ Chinese lathe is something like thirty bucks, I believe.

Looking at this lathe makes me wish I had never seen the Clausing. The Big Dog is ready to go. No damage. No wear. And if I want to add stuff to it, all the parts are available, brand new, at sane prices. If it were the size of the Clausing, parts would cost a lot more than mini-lathe parts, but they wouldn’t cost what Clausing stuff does. Besides, the Chaiwanese manufacturers don’t consider rests and drill chucks and other such items “accessories.” They come WITH the tools.

I’m adding about three hundred dollars’ worth of stuff, but I could have turned this thing on right out of the box and started machining.

I think I may make myself a promise. If this thing works out, and if I can’t get the Clausing working to my satisfaction, next year I’ll give up and get a Chinese or Taiwanese 13″ lathe. Life is too short.

I really don’t know what goes on in the minds of the people who insist it’s better to buy American. If someone is willing to sell you a quality American lathe at a price a hobbyist can afford, it generally means the lathe is a mess. A new Clausing 5936 would probably cost $20,000 (without accessories), if such a thing existed. I paid $2200 for one nearly as old as I am. Sometimes an eccentric will die, and his like-new lathe will end up in an estate sale priced at $500, but if you wait for things like that to happen, well, you’re an idiot.

I seriously think the China-bashing may be rooted in slavish support for labor unions. Union members tend to be pretty rabid in their efforts to destroy competition, and that would certainly extend to former members on Internet machining forums.

There are no new American manual lathes, unless you include Sherlines and Taigs, which are tiny. There are no union jobs lost when you buy from Shop Fox or Enco. You can’t advance the cause of union socialism by buying a used American lathe, but you can advance the cause of Chinese capitalism by buying Chinese.

People said I was stupid to pass up “reconditioned” American mills. Oh, man. Talk about wrong. For four grand, I could have had one of these things delivered, minus the DRO and variable speed. What does “reconditioning” mean? It means they paint it, grind the table down, and scrape the ways, pretty much. To me, that sounds like buying a car with 150,000 miles, just because someone painted it and gave it a ring job. What are the bearings like? How much longer will the motor last? Does the spindle have runout from 50,000 hours of use, and if not, will it develop during its first year in your garage? No way to know.

Over my years of trying to gather info on machine tools, I’ve noticed that two guys get a lot of respect. One is Frank Ford, and the other is Forrest Addy. They both come down on the pro-China side, when it comes to tools for newbies.

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