Yuo don't want a Porper model B lathe
Rumor has it that poprer subcontracted the manufacturing of his model b lathes i'm guessing approx 7-10 years ago. Anyway Mueller has this article listed in their cureent catalog. They new ones are only good for repairs. It would seem that they have multiple issues. One major issue is the one being the chuck will not zero the runout. It's impossible to bore or drill anything in this chuck and with any kind accuracy. I had a used porper that i tried everything to rid the run out on and could not. I've seen 4 porper's and three of the 4 had the same problem. The one that idn't was supposedly one that was one of the first ones built. Two of them were brand new from porper. Porper did nothing to satisfy these people that spent $3400 + $200 shipping for these great big pieces of junk. He actually states that it is a repair lathe. That's all the newer model b lathes are. Porper's people aren't the nicest people that i've ever had to deal with , when it came to buying accessories and getting reamed on the parts.
The hightower is the way to go. If you're starting out, then you can move up into a higher priced heavier machine that will enable you to do more, having two machines. These are very nice machines. I have one of the deluxe cuesmiths and i also have a southbend.
