"rigger" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Oct 5, 8:16 am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"Abrasha" wrote in message

. ..

lathes wrote:
hi all

has anyone any experience with oil country lathes? anyone suggest
some good, reliable, heavy duty oil country lathes? anyone had any
bad experiences with any manufacturers?
please help as am needing to buy soon.

i have been looking on a href="http://www.findamachine.com"oil
country lathes/a

What's an oil country lathe?

A really long one, 25 feet or more. They're used for machining the ends
of
oil well pipe and related jobs.

Much shorter but big-bore lathes are often called "oil country lathes"
today.

--
Ed Huntress

IIRC the main ingredient for an oil field lathe (which
we sometimes called "hollow spindle lathes") was
a large hole through the spindle. Many of the ma-
chines, such as Gisholt, were set-up as turret
lathes to handle the cutting, trimming, threading
operations. The largest capacity machine we
ever rebuilt had somewhere around a 14" to 16"
hole through the spindle.

dennis
in nca

As I tried to imply, the term has been modified some over the years.
Oil-country lathes originally were very long, in addition to having a big
spindle bore. In recent decades it's more common to call any lathe with a
big hollow spindle, some of them quite short, an oil country lathe.

--
Ed Huntress