Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

What a shock; free shipping arrived almost overnight! I unpacked this lathe, wiped off the shipping grease, waxed everything down, and evaluated how to make this lathe work well. The tool posts have a cast and painted surface; that would work, but a flattened and polished surface would work smoother, so I filed down and waxed the toolrests. Tested sliding a tool across it and it was smooth as butter. Now it was time to try turning a few pens. Lots of chatter and my mandrel kept behaving very strange. Looking again, I realized that I'd dialed the faceplate (less than 0.06 runout) but that I hadn't checked headstock to tailstock alignment. Height was good (the headstock and tailstock center heights matched) but the headstock was about a degree off. Removed the motor and controller, loosened the allens holding the headstock in place, and banged the headstock with a soft faced hammer until it lined up. Luckily there was enough play in the castings to bring it back to true. Tightened down the headstock, reassembled everything, and tried a few more pens. Perfect. Quiet, nice cuts, and the variable speed control works very well. So if you have never worked with a lathe before you may have better luck with a more expensive machine, one with better QC at the factory. However, if you know the nitty gritty of lathes and can tweak it yourself, this is an excellent value. I would give it 5 stars if I knew everyone out there would be happy with it out of the box but I've removed one star for the headstock misalignment. Once that was repaired I had a solid, well-built lathe for about a third the cost of most comparably sized models.