Is This Lathe Right For Me?

If you are new to woodturning generally, or don't have room in your shop for a really big lathe, then in my opinion you can't go wrong with a 46-140 if you find one that has been well taken care of. It's a solid, durable, high quality machine that will certainly outlive you if you treat it well, and you can do a lot with it.

If you already have a large monetary investment in lathe tooling (scroll chucks, faceplates, etc.) and you want to use them on this lathe then you will be successful adapting the 46-140's headstock to any spindle size except 1" 8tpi.

In other words, if you're willing to buy (or have a machinist fabricate) a spindle adapter then anything smaller than 7/8" or larger than 1.25" in diameter will work.

Why won't 1-8 work? A machinist will (or should) tell you that it's either not possible or just plain unsafe to make a thread adapter that goes from 7/8" to 1" because the root diameter (bottom) of a 1" thread is just ever so slightly larger than 7/8". There would be too little if any metal left to keep the adapter all in one piece. So all you folks with 1-8 headstock accessories are out of luck.

Since the headstock spindle will not accept morse (or jacobs) taper tooling you're mostly out of luck here too, unless you have a scroll chuck. Perfectly serviceable MT #1 adapters may be fabricated from hardwood for mounting in a scroll chuck. This will be demonstrated in future blog postings.

Replacing the headstock spindle with a custom machined one is theoretically possible but doing so would be prohibitively costly unless you happened to have a really good machine shop at your disposal. Your money would be better spent on a larger lathe that has an appropriately sized headstock for your existing tooling.

Newcomers to woodturning are understandably reluctant to even think about creating adapters, faceplates or other workpiece-holding jigs on their own, whether out of wood or any other material. For a beginner that would be putting the cart before the horse. But after a reasonable period of time you will come to appreciate that jig/fixture and tool making are a natural part of the woodturner's craft -- and a source of enjoyment and satisfaction in themselves. And that's the Great Secret about why it is possible to obtain this lathe relatively inexpensively -- most folks (and especially beginners) assume that you must go to a commercial source for all of your accessories. It's just not true.

In sum, this lathe should provide many years of good service to beginning and intermediate turners. If and when the day comes that you discover that you want to become a professional bowl or hollow form turner, you can then move up to a dedicated "pro" machine and turn this one over to someone else who, like yourself now, is looking for a high quality machine at a price that an amateur can afford.