In article ,
"Dr. deb" wrote:
Thanks for the input. Maybe I am just a hermit in sheep's clothing, but
here in rural southern Alabama, there are not a lot of estate sales that
contain power wood working tools, especially lathes.

You may need to extend your distance, or your search time, or both. Use
any network of people you have access to to help keep an eye out,
including this one (I doubt you want to come as far as New England for a
lathe, however, so I personally am not going to be a lot of use - but
other RCW folks in your area might be). Let people know you are looking.

Farm or machine shop auctions are another possible avenue, with the
usual auction caveats (keep an eye on that tailstock!). Government
surplus seems to take a delight in putting equipment out in the rain to
ruin it before selling it off, but businesses that are either going
belly up and selling off (from under a roof), or doing well and buying
new stuff can be good sources for what they used to use.

Scrapyards (the horror, the horror) might be another avenue, if they
know in advance that you want one intact, so you don't come in and find
that they have 6 they got last week, and dropped with the crane to see
how many little pieces they could make out of them. Shudder.

Be open to a metalworking lathe - a lathe that's "utterly worn out" for
metalwork is often just fine for woodwork with a simple tool-rest
transplant, and they are generally built quite heavily. The spindle
still needs to be good, but a case of bedwear that's terrible for
fixed-carriage-tooling metalwork is no problem at all for hand-held
tooling woodwork.

Have you got a local "ad paper"? Do they have a web site you can search?
Sometimes the bigger stuff gets moved out of estates though those
channels. Is there a local business that specializes in buying up house
contents - they might occasionally get a lathe they don't really want.

I was looking actively for most of a year before the first lathe came up
locally. Less than 2 months later the second one came up, and had enough
more that I wanted that I got it, too. Since then, I've sworn off buying
any more until I sell or otherwise dispose of some (depending what's
counted as a lathe, I have something like 5 lathes at present - not all
count as good).

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