Mid America Basic repair first impression

Ordered one of these to do some tip replacements, and shaft clean ups,.for myself and possibly others in my area. Pool is doing well here, but there is no service available to replace tips with a lathe, other than when big tournament's are in the area, and Jacoby has a booth set up. Not looking at this as a money making thing, I just like doing my own thing, I am familiar with using a lathe, as I had extensive use with a machine lathe when I was younger, and have been an avid woodturner for the last 14 years, so should hopefully be a short learning process, I hope. Haven't fully setup yet, as right after it arrived, we were leaving town for a few days. I did unpack it before leaving, and this is my review for now. It was extremely well packaged and boxed up and shipped. Very professional job. Can't wait to put it all together today, and hopefully try it out. I have lots of yard work to do, so it may be tomorrow before I get a chance to try it out. Lathe was built and shipped in the time frame promised, and extremely well packaged. First impression, is A+

Couldn't wait for tomorrow to try it out. Took one of my inexpensive house cues, and took my time, and quite honestly it was straight forward, and fairly easy tip install. To be fair, it took me about 30 min for this first one, but I had to learn the controls, and figure out what to do. Also took very small cuts the first time, as I had no idea how well the tip would cut, and quite honestly was afraid of taking too big of a cut and getting into the ferrule. Had to set up the radius cutter also, so, all in all, about 30 min for the first time. The tip actually cut quite easy, and smooth, both the side cut, and the radius cut with the V shaped cutter. Not sure if it was the tip I used, UltraSkin, or sharp cutters, maybe both, but it actually cut smoother than some of the youtubes that I watched. This actually was fun to do, and came out better than I could have expected for the first time. I did have experience with using lathes though, just not a cue lathe. This could be addicting, and hopefully I don't fall into the trap of continually changing out tips, to something else, just on a whim. These UltraSkin tips seem really nice, and Tom gives great service to members here. Great lathe, and great tips also, can't wait to try another stick, with a different tip hardness.

I really appreciate every ones comments and helpful suggestions.. I really like this lathe for what I wanted to do with it. I've done 5 tips so far, all have turned out great, and no tips have popped off. I was a little concerned on our Wednesday night pool league, when my wife tried out a shaft I had done, on her cue just before we left for league, and said that was what she was going to use. While I had also just installed a new tip on my shaft, that morning, that didn't bother me as much as what would happen if my wife had a problem with her cue. Not to fear, we won our match that night, and I was told that I needed to Install a new tip on her shaft the next day, or she would be keeping the shaft that she had, matching ring work or not. I have since made a dedicated spot in my shop for this lathe, and am in the process of making a dust cover for it, as I do a lot of woodworking in there in the fall and winter. I do want to get one of those one sided cutting blades for when it is tough to get the ferrule running true, to make it easier to trim the tip even with the ferrule.

I do have dial indicator setups that I use for setting up my woodworking equipment, and after reading went out and chucked a point up and it ran true. I am talking about a very small runout, at times, and not always. Also the runout will change, and can be eliminated by rotating the shaft, and or more importantly, by rotating the plastic bushing protecting the shaft. Keep in mind that I am constantly accused by my wife of being too much of a perfectionist. I was easily and quickly, able to zero out the runout to where it was unnoticeable, on 4 of the 5 shafts, and trim the tip and glue squeeze out into the ferrule, without problem. Only on one shaft did I end up with a runout of what I would consider to be about .002, and actually feel that it was the shaft, or quite possibly the clamping of the shaft. May have been able to zero it out if I had taken a little more time with it, but quite honestly had no problem dealing with it as it really was quite insignificant. I am very careful to only use as much clamping effort as necessary to keep the shaft from slipping. I guess with more experience it may get easier, but I really don't see how it could be any easier than it has been. I'm sure if you were not familiar in using a lathe, and or cutting tools, there might be a little longer learning curve, but honestly for me it has been a very straight forward process. This lathe, as I'm sure others like it, make it a very easy process in doing a professional tip install. Really looking forward to using it for other uses as well. I may play with my dial indicator on the ferrule for the next one, but so far I have found that if I don't see a runout, I am able to cut into the ferrule without issue.

I have thought about how to do that. With a machinist lathe, I think it would be a fairly straight forward process to make a ferrule, but I know that on my woodworking lathe, even though its one of the highest end lathes made, it takes some doing to drill a round, centered hole, as the tailstock is really hit and miss in alignment with the headstock. I am able to get it close if needed by inserting two points and trying to lock the tailstock and headstock first. I didn't purchase the tailstock chuck attachment, but will probably have to in the future. Should be interesting the first time, and I'll be sure to practice on a house cue first.

Been about two months now, and I've done about a dozen tips or so, and it's going well enough that I finally felt comfortable installing tips on other peoples shafts. Have made a few changes to how I do them though. While my first ones all turned out ok, I have since made it easier to get a good result. Had a couple inexpensive dial gauges laying around and decided to rig one up to help center the shafts. This really is a nice way to go, sometimes I can get it centered in 30 seconds, some times it takes a couple of minutes. I really makes things easier when you get the runout to 1 or 1 1/2 thou or less, and time is cheap for me. Next thing I did was to use what they call the cut off bit, but what I would call a parting bit,, from my woodturning ways, for ,trimming the tip even with the ferrule. I picked this idea up from another poster on here when he was discussing using something similar. I did modify the grind angle slightly to get the cut that I wanted, and it cuts even the soft tips extremely clean and smooth. Decided to try something different than the radius cutter attachment with the v-cutter I had been using, and made a spacer platform for scraping the tip shape with xacto blades. Took a bit to get the height right, and I was a little nervous holding the blade the first time, but all went great. Will probably buy a riser block in the future, and make something permanently attached to that. I'm getting great results now, and couldn't be happier.