Hiya mate and welcome to the forum. I started turning last year and I find it totally addictive. A few things really helped me and I'll try and give you the benefit of my experience as a recent beginner;
- Visit (and join if possible) a local turning club. Turners seem to all be a great bunch, very helpful (even if five turners will have at least six different ways of doing things
). I got to try out a few different types of lathe, albeit after I had bought my first lathe (the basic Aminster variable speed for £170).
- Get a copy of Keith Rowley's book
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Woodturning-Fou ... 977&sr=8-1
This is a bit of a bible for beginners and it certainly helped me to understand why I was catching (and making bowls fly across the room!).
- Bear in mind that your budget will need to encompass other essentials as well as a lathe...I didn't understand this and it stretched far beyond the two hundred quid for my lathe, much to the delight of my wife.
My essentials if I was buying again now would be;
>A lathe (with variable speed and a decent swing over the bed of at least 10 inches)
>A scroll chuck with a screw-chuck and a set of jaws. I've got the K8 and K10 from Axi and both are very good. Get a decent and easy to use chuck from the beginning because it gives you lots of options for holding the workpiece
>A decent, but basic set of tools. If I was starting again, I would buy Crown or Robert Sorby and would buy individually a small parting tool, two bowl gouges (for different grinds), a spindle gouge, a skew chisel and a roughing gouge. That is enough to get you started and you can add as you go along. All turners will say that they have loads of chisels which they never use, so I have been advised to get good with the ones I have before getting carried away and buying loads
>A grinder and jig to get good, repeatable angles on your chisels. This is absolutely essential I think and I have found it to be as important to practice sharpening as it is to practice turning. I have been very fortunate to have a couple of very nice and experienced turners who live nearby, so I have been shown the basics and then been able to go to them when I was making cock-ups and didn't know why. If you don't have access to this, then going to a club becomes even more important. I think it twenty minutes of someone showing you the best way to sharpen a chisel saves hours and hours of trial and error and massively improves your end product. There is loads of info on these boards about grinders and you might already have one and be very experienced in using it. I bought a six-inch Record grinder and put a white and pink wheel on it, along with the Axi sharpening jig, which I use for most of my turning tools (I also have a Tormek wet grinder that I bought first, but I wouldn't do that if I had my time again).
>Decent quality sandpaper, sealant and finishing oil (again, you may already have all of this).
My experience is that you can buy cheap tools, but you will end up replacing them if you spend any time at all on turning. The Axi set I bought at the beginning were ok, but I am now working through and buying better makes to replace them. I think your £500 budget is ample, but not if you spend more than £300 on a lathe. I would go to the turning club, talk to the guys there and you will probably get offered second-hand stuff far cheaper (and often better quality) once they know you are looking. Also, go to the for sale board here and ask for people's opinions about what you need in here. I bout mostly new and have realised since that I could have saved a fortune.
Whatever you do, I'm sure you will enjoy yourself and you have definitely made a good start by coming in here and asking for advice. I am no authority on anything and the above is simply my limited experience which I hope helps in some way. Good luck.
