Late to the party as always, but another vote for the buy-a-real-lathe from me. I did buy the parkside lathe, even tried to use it.
Yeah, don't. It's a complete waste of money, because as big as the grin is on your face if you use it never having touched a lathe before, it's nothing compared to when you actually use a lathe that isn't underpowered, wobbly, and generally hardpressed to mangle anything but fingers.
So I was tidying up after the last bit of turning and was planning on starting into routing the lathe dust collection host across the ceiling and into the cyclone lid I’ll be making using a r…
www.stochasticgeometry.ie
I mean, it's just dire. Even trying to smooth the surface with a skew pushes it past its limit: