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Message: <blockquote data-quote="OldGreyDog" data-source="post: 1568389" data-attributes="member: 39174">I have a very small metal cutting lathe - a Haighton Cadet. Its about seventy old and is driven by a single phase, single speed (reversible) motor via belts. It has a countershaft and 4:1 reduction back gear, steel on bronze bearings, so there no loss of power when run at slow speeds which is a problem on some small lathes with electronic speed control. A mate who is a very skilled engineer made me a set of change-gears for it enabling cutting metric threads from about 2.5 to 16mm, and similar imperial sizes.  Decent small lathes sometimes turn up at reasonable cost on the usual sale sites. I recall paying 120 squids for mine.The modern Chinese imports might be more accurate, but even these old machines can be accurate enough for most purposes if a bit of time is spent setting them up.When you find a suitable lathe, unless it comes with loads of extras, you will need to keep aside a decent budget for tooling. A lot come with three jaw self centering chucks, but I would struggle without a four jaw chuck with independent jaws.</blockquote>

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