buying a lathe?

[Munchskull]

Agreeing with what has been said above. Old lathes are going to be your best bet. Only the ones built strong will have survived. If you are wanting to save on price then get good with some dials and backlash that is how my team made most of our parts up to this year till we got two new DROs. One place to look is craigslist. See if you can check out/test out the lathe first before buying. Offten you will find 40's-50's era lathes there. Good luck with your search.

P.S. if you can get your self a Monarch lathe do it. My schools metal shop has one that most likely help in WW2, it is considered by our team and our metal shop to be the second best machine out of the six lathes we have.