What lathes do people use.

[dorg]

Im looking to have a go at barreling my own rifles and wondered what experiences people have had with various lathes. Do I buy a colchester been looking at a student or a Mascot but these are old machines or a top end chinese machine I can get top Grizzly or Warco lathes cheap. This is going to be a play with and learn machine. I already have a muzzle flushing system and good friends to teach me.

[Ronin]

If you can find a good Student then good luck, the larger Colchester lathes have wider headstocks - a consideration if you plan to do everything through the headstock with outbaord spider.

 

Later V versions of the Colchester range are nice but a price hike.

 

The Harrison M300 is also a contender - again good luck finding a good condition used one.

 

I use a Warco GH 1330, it suits my needs and accurate rifles appear to come out the "other end"

 

Ive used the same machine for the last ten years.

[Dellboy]

Problem with the older english lathes is how they were treated in service when they got old . We had a few old lathes that were used and sadly abused as roughing lathes and were really well worn . I have a lathe which came originally from the AWRE and was being scrapped ,a guy i know converted it to single phase and its great ,except for things like changewheels and collets etc .

 

The thing about any machine is the cost of the tooling .It will probably equal the cost of a s/h machine .

[baldie]

By English if you can.

 

I have a Colchester Triumph 2500 with the electronic gearbox and its a truly superb machine.

 

It was new in 1990 and one of the last English machines made.

 

I,ve kept on top of it, and replaced parts before they were well worn.

 

Be aware though, they are not cheap things to service.

 

I recently fitted new half nuts on the long travel, and a new cross slide screw and nuts. Neither were bad, but there was no change out of almost 2K.

 

The cross slide now has 0.0002 " of lash......not bad considering the factory tolerance is 0.004" !

 

My other lathe is a metric M300, and came from a school. It has the usual chips and dings caused by kids leaving the chuck keys in, but typically for a school lathe, probably never did any threading, so the gearbox etc is like new.

 

A very good all-round machine, and perfect for headstock chambering. If you can find a long bed variant, they are about the perfect barrelling lathe, with all options covered.

 

If you are really lucky, you may drop on an imperial version, though rare in the UK as most were made for the american market.

 

The "m " stands for metric, but they did make it in imperial. It doesn't really matter which it is, as both thread types can be cut easily on this machine.

 

600 lathes in Heckmondwike are now the owners of Colchester/Harrison, and carry a huge stock of spares for both machines.

 

I'm lucky in that a good friend is my service engineer, and worked for Colchester for many years. He is a good contact for machines, and offers a full service/repair facility anywhere in the UK.

 

A very handy chap to know, and if you give me a buzz during the day, i'll give you his number.

[Brillo]

My father-in-law has a Colchester lathe (Triumph or Trophy?) and I've been encouraging him to sell it because he's getting on in years and it gets little use. I could find out more if you're interested.

[bradders]

Any half decent lathe will do

I use a Warco GH 1330, because I didn't have time to search around for a good 2nd hand one and have it refurbished

The Warco suits my needs and also came with a warranty.

It's not perfect but does a very good job, but a lot of that is down to the tooling and how you use it

 

To be fair, most rifle builders only use their lathes lightly, turning tenons for an inch or so, threading and chambering.

The barrels for the most part come pre-profiled.

 

I find the DRO on mine a Godsend and never use the dials anymore

 

The one really great investment I did make with mine though was buying the Truebore Alignment System chuck assy. That gets used every day and only occasionally comes off if I have a fairly long barrel to work with, as the chuck assy takes up a fair bit of room, but the 4 jaw suffices in those cases

 

For chambering etc you can go through the headstock and use a spider on the back-end, or use a steady and 4 jaw, and it's good to be able to tackle your jobs in any way necessary, but since I did get the TBAS, I think the spider has become mostly redundant (for me anyway)

It really is a handy thing

 

I've been in a couple of "working" gunshops in the US, and you'd be surprised, or even shocked at the state of some of the lathes those guys are using....old Clausings with canvas drive belts.....but still capable of turning out world class winning rifles

[dorg]

I think it will come down to the time I have to go looking at colchesters. The decision is abit harder as I can get the warco lathes 1/2 price and really like the look of the bernardo 410 x 1000 lathe on ebay as I can get this for about £5k in the grizzly gunsmithing lathe guise.

[Dellboy]

Any half decent lathe will do

I use a Warco GH 1330, because I didn't have time to search around for a good 2nd hand one and have it refurbished

The Warco suits my needs and also came with a warranty.

It's not perfect but does a very good job, but a lot of that is down to the tooling and how you use it

 

To be fair, most rifle builders only use their lathes lightly, turning tenons for an inch or so, threading and chambering.

The barrels for the most part come pre-profiled.

 

I find the DRO on mine a Godsend and never use the dials anymore

 

The one really great investment I did make with mine though was buying the Truebore Alignment System chuck assy. That gets used every day and only occasionally comes off if I have a fairly long barrel to work with, as the chuck assy takes up a fair bit of room, but the 4 jaw suffices in those cases

 

For chambering etc you can go through the headstock and use a spider on the back-end, or use a steady and 4 jaw, and it's good to be able to tackle your jobs in any way necessary, but since I did get the TBAS, I think the spider has become mostly redundant (for me anyway)

It really is a handy thing

 

I've been in a couple of "working" gunshops in the US, and you'd be surprised, or even shocked at the state of some of the lathes those guys are using....old Clausings with canvas drive belts.....but still capable of turning out world class winning rifles

Is the truebore the 6 way chuck system ?

[bradders]

Is the truebore the 6 way chuck system ?

I suppose you could call it that, it's a 6 jaw chuck on a gimbled backing plate, adjustable in the x,y & z axis'