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Graham

On 2018-02-09 11:34 PM, wrote:
On Friday, February 9, 2018 at 4:47:16 PM UTC-6, Electric Comet wrote:
On Fri, 9 Feb 2018 09:24:46 -0700
graham wrote:

General was a great company making superb woodworking machinery at
their foundry in Drummondville, Quebec. The only N.American
competitor on quality in those days was Powermatic - Delta was almost
as good. Now General is no more and the Powermatic foundry has also
closed (AIUI).

i recall your previous comments about general here

did not look closely at this one but from what you are seeing this is
a real good buy

The General 160 lathe for $600 is probably a great buy. Value wise. BUT, its still a 12" swing lathe. Is 36" between centers. Pulley speed changes. Maybe Reeves drive to get variable speed. Not sure.

No, it's a 4-speed. If it had the Reeves drive, there would be a lever
on the front of the cabinet.
I'm faced with a similar problem regarding pricing. I have a 160 for
sale. It is just the cast iron top on a custom base. I bought it that
way and built the base as I'm too tall for the cabinet-type in this advert.
Apparently General used to age all the castings to allow stress relief
before machining them. The quality of their table saws was legendary. I
saw some ex-school shop ones in a local store recently for very
reasonable prices but I have no room for one at the moment.
Graham