As for books some of the old Southbend reprints are great. Check out "How to
run a lathe" and "Machine shop projects" . Those and many more you can get
at http://www.lindsaybks.com/ Lindsay books reprints a lot of cool old
books.

As far as a lathe. If your looking at a Jet look at Grizzly and Harbor
Freight. Jet lathes are the highest of the bunch and all 3 have the same
lathe just with different stickers and paint color. The $1000 lathe at jet
is the Grizzly 4000 which can be had for about $850 delivered and the HF
version is on sale for $599 until the 26th.

Old American iron can be had for a good deal depending on what area of the
country you live in. If you're in the NE there are tons of old iron
available. In the old industrial NE there were thousands of machine shops
years ago and many workers had their own equipment at home too. If you're in
the Texas area like me there are slim pickings so I went with a HF unit.I
got tired of finding nothing in all the papers and all the ebay stuff was
either to high or it would cost more to ship than it was worth.

Best advice is to check out yahoo groups for whatever lathes you are looking
at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/9x20Lathe/ This group covers all the chinese
lathes like HF, Jet, Grizzly etc
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/atlas_craftsman/ This one covers all the old
Atlas/ Craftsman lathes
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/southbendlathe/ Southbend group

There are groups for Sheldon, Logan and probably many more. You can read
till yer eyeballs pop out.
Byron...

"Snyper1982" wrote in message
oups.com...
Ok, I am sure you guys get asked these questions a lot, so i apologize
in advance. I am totaly and completely new to metal working. I am
mostly curious about making little parts with a lathe. I just dont know
what a good lathe is, and what some good reading material is on using a
lathe.

What are some good brands of lathe? are Jets good, cause i was looking
around a bit and i saw a jet that was about $1,000 brand new. Well
thanks for reading, hope to get some good answers from you guys, as id
like to get into metal working.