I have no first hand knowledge of Bassel's lathes since I don't own one, but I have had other dealings with Bassel that were less than satisfactory.
Do a search for "sanding mandrels" and read what you find concerning Bassel's mandrels. Notice that I was a supporter of Bassel's from the start.
The mandrels in the photos are mine. They were very poorly made. The machine shop Bassel used did a bad job (a REALLY bad job), even a child could see it.
Look, it could have happened to anyone. That's how it is when you farm things out to machine shops...sometimes they get it wrong. It happens.
BUT BASSEL SENT THEM OUT ANYWAY!!!
Then he slandered me on here (and since then removed the libelous remarks...good idea!) and said I had damaged the product to make him look bad, and that he would NEVER send out something like that. That was when another customer piped in and said that the mandrels he got, and returned, were just like mine, chipped, among other faults.
I'm not going to go through the whole saga again, you can look it up if you want to, but he even admitted he knew they were not right and sent them out anyway. And then tried to blame me. To me, it's plain dishonest. No way to do business.
Concerning Bassel's lathes, I was an early supporter of Bassel's, and had nothing but good words and encouragement for him. I've been around tools and machinery my whole life; it's something I know something about, and I wanted him to succeed. Plus, I needed another lathe; his looked nice and I don't mind taking a chance to support the new kid on the block. I'm funny that way.
But several things put me off about Bassel's lathes. First, the machine kept changing... it was being refined. People complained about this and that, and Bassel made changes to address their issues. But it's not OK to use customers as the subjects of R&D. When a product goes to market the R&D is supposed to be finished.
After the R&D is finished, a design is frozen for the time being and production begins. If there are no problems in the actual manufacturing process, then you can safely advertise them for sale. But this does not seem how Bassel proceeds.
Bassel keeps changing his lathe's design, perhaps for the better, but the development process seems ongoing and the design never gets frozen. The constant revisions, upgrades and tweaks are a good sign, but all this should have happened before production began.
His lathes still look very good to me but I think perhaps more time needs to be spent on R&D. The design has been revised again every time I look at it.
My biggest problem it that Bassel just doesn't seem like a stand-up guy who will step forward and take the heat when things go wrong; he seems to cast himself as a victim when people complain about real problems. For me, it's not the machinery, it's the man.
There are several other people on this forum who make cue lathes and I don't recall reports of anything short of excellent customer service from any of them. I would chose from those.
Robin
Edit- Bassel's style and manner of speech in post#8 pretty much is what you get. I have no idea what Joe's problems with Bassel were, but with that language and attitude......none for me, thanks.
Nice looking lathe though.
