Finding a lathe on eBay

[Keith TomkinsonParticipant @keithtomkinson68004]

What are the best search words for finding a lathe? The word lathe lists every sale item with the word lathe in it – including everything from photographs to tutorials, and there are hunderds of them. Any ideas?

[Keith TomkinsonParticipant @keithtomkinson68004]

[Phil WhitleyParticipant @philwhitley94135]

Problem is they put the word lathe in to get on as many search hits as possible!, I check ebay regularly, and I agree, it is becoming a problem. set the search parameters to "used" and UK only, this thins out the list, but you may miss something that is "not specified. Also remember eBay is not the only auction site. prices on ebay for machine tools have rocketed in he last eighteen months for reasons I can' quite fathom, try googleing "LATHES FOR SALE" or somesuch search term.]

Phil.

[Jim NolanParticipant @jimnolan76764]

It’s a nightmare I don’t want a new lathe but I like looking and multiple pages of stuff related to; but of no interests gets boring pretty quickly.

Always select Business office and industrial then select lathe, try and sort things out a bit by using advanced search. Putting in common words to exclude like drill, tip, tool, chuck, etc. Then set the page display to gallery view and 192 images per page that way you can scan through them reasonably quickly and open the ones you want to look at in a new tab.

Jim

[David LittlewoodParticipant @davidlittlewood51847]

It's also worth looking on the Homeworkshop site:

**LINK**

every day or so, as although there is not the same volume of stuff on there, it tends to be from sellers who have taken care of it, and prices are mostly more reasonable. For those who don't know it, it's a great site, run on a not-for-profit basis by volunteers. Stuff does seem to sell extremely quickly though, so if you see something you like, don't hang about. Most sellers are perfectly happy to let you make a provisional reservation subject to inspection for large items like lathes.

Good luck!

David

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Use "lathe"

Then "ending soonest"

Then "auctions only"

Then search through the next 48 hours

Have a look every couple of days

You will hone your technique as you get more familiar with their system

[Chris TriceParticipant @christrice43267]

Unless you're looking for a specific brand name, try 'metal lathe', 'small lathe' or 'model lathe'.

[Gone AwayParticipant @goneaway]

Like Google, the eBay noise-to-signal ratio is abysmal and getting worse. With Google it's planned that way but it's hard to see any net benefit on eBay.

Depending on the kind/size of lathe you are looking for, limiting the search to Business & Industrial might miss a few – particularly small lathes.

In the left pane, you might want to limit on 'Distance' for an item of this type (you aren't very likely to want to ship around the globe).

In principle, you should be able to limit on minimum price – you're not going to get much of a lathe for £2.98 – but the practice among some of setting a very low starting price (£0.01) together with a much higher reserve may preclude that. eBay should really limit this. (This works better for "Buy-It-Now" items).

Don't forget exclusionary ( "-" ) search terms to sift through some of the noise. This can be very useful. Thus you might want to search:

lathe -bit -carbide -pen -watchmakers ….. (etc)

You can keep adding exclusion terms and re-searching as you go along and it becomes apparent where the main noise is.

 

 

 

Edited By Sid Herbage on 10/08/2012 00:57:15

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

If you google "south bend metal lathe" you will get hits to an absolutely great small lathe.

(sorry had to do it, being a proud owner of a 1949 SB 9B)

(by the way I'm talking about the old South Bend lathes up to 1970's – there are new SB's being made in Taiwan and distributed by Grizzly in USA but they are not at all like the old ones.)

Boxford in UK made clones or at least lathes based on SB designs just FYI. They are reportedly very good also, and often a fraction of the cost of a Myford.

JD

[DismalduncParticipant @dismaldunc]

I search for "lathe" then sort by highest price first then skip the 3 pages or so of big scary industrial machines until I hit the world of colchester,harrison etc

[David ColwillParticipant @davidcolwill19261]

If time is not a problem try setting e-mail alerts for "lath" "miford" and other similar spelling mistakes, that way most of the target audience are not looking at them.

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