Oh, don't get me wrong, I have purchased plenty of stuff from China, whether the seller admitted it was coming from China or not. The largest and most complex item I ever got was a milling machine I bought many moons ago. I used it specifically to make water dishes out of PVC end caps to provide water for the baby snakes in deli cups.
Certainly overkill for the job, but when the dust settled after selling a bunch of those water dishes, I had a free milling machine out of the deal.
I have no idea how this will go. This is apparently a rather new model lathe being sold, so finding replacement parts in the USA may be real dicey. Some things may be direct replacements from similar models already long imported within the USA, but I won't know till I try to find them. Some things are specific to the particular specs of the lathe, such as the "swing over bed"and chuck mounting method. If I want what they call a "spider" for the back of the spindle so I can mount long rods through the spindle hole without it dangerously whipping around our of balance, are there generic ones I can fabricate for that lathe?
One thing I noticed about this tooling stuff is that the most common thing people do with a home machine shop is to make and modify parts for their own tools. I guess that is a big part of the "hobby" aspect of this stuff.
So that is what concerns me. I guess as long as the basic machine is solid and doesn't have any "brick wall" problems, it won't be a problem if the seller evaporates once he has my money and the machine has been signed as being delivered. Things like the spindle being way out of alignment, or the bed twisted out of being true.
So we'll see, I suppose. Still got a few things I want to check on. Seems to be "metric" lathes and "imperial" lathes, and I'm sure this one is a "metric". Need to see whether that will be a problem one way or another for me. Not that my needs are all that great and all that stringent, I guess.