Welcome along to the forum.

There are many old posts re old industrial versus new Chinese lathe. I had an old 1942 built American Southbend for 45 years, It did most of what I needed to do, bigger stuff I took into work. With retirement approaching about 10 years ago I sold the old lathe and bought a used Taiwanese copy of a Harrison M300. Bigger machine and good enough for what I do.

If it's of any interest, Warco have just repopulated their page of used machines – one has already gone [waggles eyebrows] but there are a few Warco gearhead machines of various sizes at prices that might be worth not hanging around for!

Hello Jonny and welcome. I think it's fair to say that most of us are bumbling amateurs, even professional engineers because the home workshop is generally a far cry from a commercial one.

May I ask what sort of boats? I assume wooden ones. I'm particularly interested because my late father-in-law was a boatbuilder, mainly of cabin cruisers.

I think one of the important things when deciding on a lathe is what diameter of parts is envisaged.

Brian