The Myford Super 7 is an excellent British-made lathe for flute making - I have 3 Myford lathes, two which I purchased from one of Rod Cameron’s former assistants in Mendocino and the other from Canada. Unfortunately the seller of this one doesn’t ship or I’d consider it - thus if you are in driving distance of New Jersey and are looking for a lathe to get into flute making this would be very worth checking out. Currently its only at $650. New ones go in the US for around $7500 or more, the last time I checked.
Well, if you can find a similar SouthBend (options and condition) for the same money, then it’s about half a dozen one way, six the other I suppose - The tie breaker, to my mind, being parts cost and availability, based on where you live. I should think that in this regard, in the U.K. you’d better off with the Myford, while over on this side of the pond the Southbend would have the edge.
Casey, have you had to replace many parts on your Myford? If so, did you find new parts costly or difficult to come buy? Certainly used parts for the Myford are much less available here than used Southbend Parts, but new Southbend parts aren’t all that cheap these days either…
One point w/ SouthBends would be to find the model w/ the larger spindle bore. The “heavy duty” type.
PS: folks have been known to make their own conversion and turn a new spindle themselves (or make a conversion nose for large collets..I did this and it works ok)
PPS: I did find a “Heavy 10” but havn’t gotten around to getting it up and running yet.
I have found this to be a common thing with larger items. People want to sell them but do not want to ship them. However, for the asking price of only 650 and if it is worth 10 times that there is a solution. You can have a shipping company go out to the sellers house and pack it up and ship it for you via freight truck. You might have to wait 2 or 3 weeks to get it but I have done this in the past and it saves a person a trip half way across the country. It costs less than you might think. Moving companies do this all the time. They have a little room left over and put it in with another load.
[quote="Loren
Loren-Won Kenobi waves hand and says: “That’s not the lathe you’re looking for. You want something else, and you want to pass this late to…MEEEEEE!!!”
Loren[/quote]
Lathes realy aren’t to hard to build from scrap and junk (I built a CNC mill that way) If you have a place and the time to put one together, I’ve got at least a couple of beds here and lots of misc. pieces of machinery to pick through. There’s a realy good little book on this kind of thing…can’t recall the title at the moment…bet you Windy knows all about this kind of thing…
I’m still having fun with my Taig. I’ve got is so tricked out now that I might as well have bought a much larger benchtop machine. I believe Dave Copeley uses a Taig micromill - great little machines.
My next lathe is budding from my father’s machine shop. As he acquires ‘junque’ he’s putting various chunks together to make another Southbend. Taper attachment, full screw-cutting, indexer, 4 chucks (but no big collets - dern!) and a rig to mount my Taig on the cross slide. Using the Taig as the cutter opens up loads of possibilities.
He’s old-fasioned, though. As soon as I start talking about stepper-motors, tool-paths, or anything CNC he gets this funny look that means, “Kids these days …”
Well, it went for less than $700. danielb…was that you Bingamon? I did bid on the lathe, but since it was at the edge of my financial range, and I was immediately outbid, I figured I wouldn’t fight you for it, raise the price, and then still lose.
Just bought a Taig CNC mill, this is going to be a fun machine! There is a little bit of a learning curve on the software. I am planning to use it for the key blocks and maybe make a Monzani replica or two…
Cheers,
It is used after all.
