Hello from West Sussex, UK

[southernchapParticipant @southernchap]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Hello, I’m Steve, a software engineer by trade and in my 50s.</p>
<p style=”text-align: left;”>I had a subscription to the ‘Workshop magazine given to me for Christmas and just discovered the forums.</p>
Currently have a 90s Record drill press, a Warco bench grinder and horizonal bandsaw and a little 7×14, that I’m upgrading to as much rigidity and capability as I can.

And yep, should have probably got an ML7 but looking at the ‘sold’ listings on eBay didn’t occur to me and not being on Facebook, I didn’t know about Facebook Marketplace, and finally, utterly missed the for sale pages in lathes.co.uk.

Eh, I’ll probably buy an ML7, or maybe something like a Boxford, later this year.

Rebuilding and upgrading the 7×14 has been a good education though.

I’ve been though a fair few kit-based hobbies and this is the first one that has ever engaged me to such a significant level.

Anyway, cheers for any welcome and I hope to offer something to the community (most often, I suspect in object lessons on what to avoid!)

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Welcome to the Forum.

You will find plenty of help and advice on here.

FWIW, Don’t rush into buying a larger blathe, just yet.

What you eventually choose will depend on what you want to do with it.

You can do small work in a big lathe, but the converse is a lot more difficult.

I found that the 2MT spindle bore of a ML7 restrictive, and wasteful of material, since anything larger than 1/2″ diameter had to be cut into short lengths, resulting lots of dog ends.

There will be screams  but I think that Myfords are over rated and consequently over priced.

Having said that, fantastic work is done on them.

The quality of far eastern lathes has improved with exposure to the western markets

I ended up with a lathe that was larger than really needed, but with very little beyond its capabilities.

A new Myford Super 7 Sigma, would have cost four times as much, and still lacked one feature that I really wanted.

(And, I also have a 7 x 14 mini lathe for the occasional small job, when the big’un can’t be broken down)

So think long and hard, and talk to others before buying.

Howard

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Welcome to forum

H

[southernchapParticipant @southernchap]

Howard, a very belated thank you for your welcome.

It will be a while before I get to a new lathe to replace this little Chinese 7x (sorry, 3.5″ swing; been spending a lot of time over at the US dominated Hobby Machinist Forum and it tends to skew one’s vernacular!). I did recently splash out for a rather tidy mid 90s Warco Minor (I got it from Warco themselves, in fact).

Having now spent a fair bit of time fettling, adjusting and modifying/upgrading the mini-lathe (on my second and hopefully penultimate tranche of this) I reckon I could make a fair fist of assessing a used bit of English ‘old iron’ but fortunately I have discovered that a colleague’s father is a model engineer and has a Boxford A and an ML7.

I managed to get about an hour or so’s ‘supervised’ play on them both and had a great time.

Anyway, he said he’s happy to come with me when I go to check out used lathes (I suspect my offer of paying for dinner at any conveniently located restaurant may have helped!) so that’s made me happier that I’ll be able to avoid paying for the privilege of doing someone else’s tip run for them!

Until then I’ll be soldiering on with my current little mini-lathe.

[southernchapParticipant @southernchap]

Harold, thank you for the welcome and again, apologies for the tardiness of my gratitude.

 

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Boxford is way better lathe than ML7 or even S7. The selling point of Myford were they were cheaper than Boxford, and you could get a host of attachments to go on the tee slotted cross slide. They were both really well made. I once had a Naerok milling machine. Within the limitations of a round column machine it was similarly well made, the table assembly was very smooth and sturdy. Naerok was made in Korea, so not all far east stuff is junk.

[duncan webster 1]

On duncan webster 1 Said:

Boxford is way better lathe than ML7 or even S7. The selling point of Myford were they were cheaper than Boxford, and you could get a host of attachments to go on the tee slotted cross slide. They were both really well made. I once had a Naerok milling machine. Within the limitations of a round column machine it was similarly well made, the table assembly was very smooth and sturdy. Naerok was made in Korea, so not all far east stuff is junk.

Yep, after a fair bit of reading over the past year and seeing the prices Myford owners seem to want for their used machines compared with prices even for Boxford A models, I’d have to agree with Howard’s assesment.

The ML7 I got to use was a lovely made machine but the Boxford just felt like I was getting the use of more machine.

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