WebSlave

So I am in the market for a small lathe to replace an even smaller Emco-Maier Compact 5 lathe that I have had for years now. I don't want anything that is heavier than Connie and myself can handle, which does limit me quite a bit, but I think I found one that will work. And from what I have been reading, the best thing to do with these Chinesium lathes is to treat them like they are just a kit, and take them apart immediately and clean them up, check alignments, polish contact areas, and perhaps even just go ahead and replace the spindle bearings. So taking the lathe apart will make it even easier to move it where I want it, part by part. So that will make that 165 lb lathe a whole lot easier to deal with. Which is a WHOLE lot better than when I was looking at a lathe a few years ago that weighed 550 lbs.

Anyway, there are about a dozen sellers on Ebay selling this particular lathe I have my eye on. All of them are showing 1 or 2 of them in stock at a warehouse in California. I had some questions I wanted answered, so I just cut and pasted my questions to all of them, figuring I would see what answers I got, and perhaps judge who best to buy from based on the quickness, implied accuracy, and thoroughness of the responses. And I could compare the answers to see if there were any discrepancies. Or at least I thought so, anyway.

Well, answers came in from seven of them, all right around the same time. Roughly between 4:00am and 5:30 am. One outlier did come in around 10:30pm. All of them had exactly the same answers, to the letter. And from the time frame of the responses, obviously the answers came from likely a single seller in China. Interesting to note that Ebay changed their ad listings to say "Item location" now, and nothing at all about where the actual seller resides. But I guess Ebay finds the income from Chinese sellers hard to resist, and the Chinese sellers KNOW that lots of people will filter out sellers (or where the item is located) from China.

I checked on the buyer feedback for all of the sellers, and they are pretty much the same. Biggest complaint seemed to be from buyers who bought something, but the seller could not deliver. Well, heck, that is easy to understand. Someone or someones are creating multiple accounts all selling the same item(s) at the same warehouse in California. So the first one to get the order gets to ship it, and too bad for the other accounts that might sell the same thing before the Ebay ad can be removed.

Honestly, I hate like hell to give China my business, but some things just are not available from anywhere else. And even then, I'm not sure if China is still shipping to the USA with this coronavirus thing and the cold war atmosphere that seems to be now in place. Even places here in the USA selling lathes are really just importing from China themselves and rebranding and reselling them. Heck, I used to buy Craftsman brand from Sears almost exclusively until I started seeing "Made in China" on all their tools, and seeing the identical items at Harbor Freight at a fraction of the price Sears was selling them. It's difficult to come up with a good reason to have any sort of brand loyalty when you see that happening, I guess.

Anyway, still pondering on the lathe, but know I can't wait too long, because apparently there really are only one or two of them available in the USA right now. And who knows when another shipment might come in? The reason I never got that 550 lb lathe mentioned above was because it was on backorder from China for quite a few months before I started getting nervous about my money being in the hands of the seller for so long. So I cancelled out of the deal. For all I knew the guy wasn't getting any inventory out of China, and would just evaporate on me without notice.

So yeah, I'm a tool-a-holic. I find a use for a lathe once every other blue moon or so, but heck, when you find you have that need, it sure is handy to have available. And the price of this thing is VERY reasonable, even if it has to be considered as a kit. I have heard a lot of people recommending buying a used USA made lathe instead of buying the Chinesium lathes, but heck, have you seen how BIG and HEAVY some of those things are? I really don't need, much less want, something that big, even if there was any way possible for me to be able to move such a thing. So compromises are in order, I believe. It's not like I have never had to do THAT before!