Club lathe reccomendations WANTED

Bob -- My club, the Minnesota Woodturners Association, owns four Jet mini lathes. Two were purchased with a grant from the AAW and the other two when Jet closed out the old models that were not drilled to accept the bed extension.

Unless your club has a permanent location where the lathe will be used, I'd recommend against spending the extra money for variable speed. Our lathes get moved around a lot when we offer hands-on sessions for club members at other members' shops or for various demos at a variety of locations. The result, generally, is fairly rough treatment as the machines are hauled in trucks and other vehicles. In short, we use them hard.

I'd recommend going with the Jet minis. While some would also recommend the Delta Midi, I've heard too many horror stories lately that suggest a problem with quality control on these lathes. Having said that, the Delta Midi was my first lathe and I had no such problems, but that was one of the first releases of that model. The Mercury with variable speed is a great little lathe--I own one--but I'd stay with the minimum of

Our club meets at the local Woodsmith store and uses which ever lathe we need. General 26020 or Delta mini lathe or Jet mini lathe or the former Delta Reeves drive 12 inch lathe. Kind of depends on what topic is being presented. For example when the Woodcut Bowlsaver was being demoed, we used the General 26020 to turn a 14" chunk of maple. For tops and yo-yos and Chinese balls we used a mini lathe I believe. For demoing the Stewart type hollowing tools, we used the General. For small hollow boxes we used the General. Didn't need to but it was the lathe we used.

So a mini lathe really isn't a very good club lathe choice since many woodturners love to see these high dollar, high falutin tools demoed by their fellow club members who bought them. And you need a bigger lathe for that.

But maybe when you want to demo something that needs a big lathe, you can schedule the monthly meeting at a club member's house who has a big lathe. And all of the smaller item demos can be handled at the school using the mini lathe. As for variable speed, I don't think its too essential. For the small stuff a mini lathe can handle, the slowest speeds on a mini are slow enough. And keep in mind a club meeting demo can only take so long before the audience loses interest and starts making more racket than the lathe by talking to their neighbors. So the club demo projects have to be fairly quick and small. Something a mini lathe can handle with its pulleys.