After many weeks of scouring the universe, I have found 3 lathes that are available for the taking.

1. One is an old Craftsman/Atlas 12" x 24" that the owner describes as being in pretty good shape. I haven't yet seen it, but he is sending me pics. It has what he thinks is the original greenish paint, has the flat bed, and the stand with heavy cast iron legs, a couple chucks, and various pieces of tooling.

2. I have also found 2 old Logans with collet type headstock. Both are in good working order, and seem to be in fair to good condition. I will examine them a second time this week, and hear them run etc. They both have the flat belt drive, one of them has the integrated belt tensioner in the belt cover.

The price is approximately the same for all the lathes, $800 - $900.

The pro's and con's, as I see them, include:

Logans are much older, and I don't know what part availablilty is and will continue to be.

The Logans have the flat belt drive, the Craftsman has the more modern V-belt. Being a newbie I'm not sure if one is inherently better/worse than the other, although continued availability of the flat belt is certainly questionable.

There seems to be an absolute abundance of parts for the Craftsman/Atlas series of lathes on Ebay. Logan seems to run a distant third in this regard, just behind South Bend.

My intended use is a home/hobby lathe, making mostly aluminum parts.

Please provide opinions (be gentle, now) as to which would be the better advised purchase decision.