Right, i'm off to look at a lathe tomorrow night. In fact i'm off to look at this one,
http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/forum/34/viewthread.php?tid=205194

Now i've not touched a lathe since i was 13 or 14 and that was 30 years ago. Apart from kicking tyres, asking how she goes and bouncing the suspension to check the shocks ..... any suggestions on what i should be looking for specifically in this case or in general?

Before someone asks what I want it for - dunno, but my dads got an old lathe and has found all sorts of things to do on it. Figured I'd be the same.

Cheers, Mike

might be worth asking on here http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/

thanks for the suggestion. I've asked.

If new the slides will take the same amount of effort at any point of the travel, as things wear you adjust up on the Gibbs so it gets stiffer where less travelled, a massive difference in load when winding across the slides is a bad thing.

Look for wear on the bed by the chuck, imagine a piece of work in the jaws, tool fitted then look where the saddle is placed for wear here, is the bed parallel and straight, can you shake the saddle by hand? Remember most work will be close to the chuck! Same applies for the cross slide.

A bit of backlash is okay, take a bit of scrap with you and see if it's chatters in use, if you can get hold of a bit of solid round bar a foot long all the better as you can take a fine cut and see how evenly it machines, make sure you run the distant end in the dead centre to support it properly.

More tooling the better, grab everything you can see!

I can tell from the photos, that lathe hasn't done a lot.....and the money being asked is at least a third cheaper than it should be......buy it quick.

It does indeed look very good, a little surface rust, nothing that a strip down clean and oil would not put right I'd take cash and a van to save the return trip.

Tooling is money, even silly things like deviders are all worth grabbing.

Grab it, it's a bargain at that price. I have a Boxford, (not as good as that one) an it's a very good bit of kit. Not too big for a home workshop, but big enough for most home tasks. As previously said get as much tooling as you can with it.