I have had pretty good luck with the busybee stuff. I just sold off my
bench top mill(moving), their model B1977 I was thinking of getting one
of the lathes, the CT043 12x36 but will have to pass until I get settled
again.
The mill worked great for the job I got it for, I had to tune it up a
bit, I put better v-belts on and did some tightening on the gibs. The
cheap chinese belts had a bend in them and caused a lot of vibration,
you could see the difference in the finish.

Howard Eisenhauer wrote:

Having run into delays in my plans to build a Gingery lathe & with
other projects in the works that I could use a lathe on I'm
considering wimping out & buying one .

I'm looking at the Craftex unit sold by Busy Bee tools
(http://www.busybeetools.com/), mainly cause they got a local outlet.
Specifically I'm thinking about their 9x19 (CT039) or maybe the 10x18
(B2227L).

I was also looking at thier lathe mill combo ( B2229 ) a year or so
ago. I"m limited for space so this seems like a good idea but I'm
concerned that the milling head might not be sturdy enough to do
reasonably useful work (fill in your own definition of "reasonable"),
it seems like a long way to the table, not to mention the height of
the lathe spindle relative to the bed width.

Now obviously these arn't top quality machines but looking at the
lathes today in person they didn't strike me as being total junk, so,
anyone here have any experience good/bad with these units?

All replies appreaciated .

Thanks,

Howard.