Repair Lathe?

showme87

showme87

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Looking to buy a lathe for tips, ferrules, and cleaning-sanding. What do you recommend? I do not want to build cues, just repair and maintain my cues and my friends cues. I am looking at the Unique and Mid-size, however I can buy a used south bend heavy 10 from a friend for 1000.00. Any suggestions? I have the money and I'm ready to purchase!
 
If the Southbend is in good condition you would have to be retarded not to get it. A thousand dollars what are you waiting for? You suffer from paralysis of analysis!!!
 
Not necessarily. The SouthBend could be completely worn out. In which case, you'd be buying a very large paper-wght. Most lathe work is done near the chuck as well as the work you'd be doing. If the carriage feels nice & snug when it's down near the tail-stock but gets rather loose when it approaches the chuck, it's an indication that the lathe's ways are worn. You'd have to make a determination as to whether it's something you can live with. If you're an accomplished machinist you might be able to work with it. If not, you may experience some problems. Any machine is only as accurate as the operator.

Personally, I'd take almost any machine with increments on the dials over a brand new one that doesn't have increments. Without increments on the dials you'd be guessing at how much to advance the cutter and......oops, I went to far.

Don't be in a hurry to spend your hard-earned money; shop around. Do some comparative shopping. This type of machine is an investment that you could conceivably have for a lifetime.
 
I have an xtra Unique Cue Companion level 3 that was thinking about listing next week or so. Saw the same configuration bring $1150.00 plus freight $65.00 about 2 weeks ago . I will take $1050.00 plus actual shipping cost if your interested. Hardly used like new condition. I now have a Hightower Deluxe and had thoughts of using the Unique at tournaments but hard to play and work. Let me know.
Thanx, Howard
 
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showme87 said:
Looking to buy a lathe for tips, ferrules, and cleaning-sanding. What do you recommend? I do not want to build cues, just repair and maintain my cues and my friends cues. I am looking at the Unique and Mid-size, however I can buy a used south bend heavy 10 from a friend for 1000.00. Any suggestions? I have the money and I'm ready to purchase!
Click to expand...

As others have said, and others have missed - IF the Southbend
is in good condition...

You may be in a very good position, having
a friend with a lathe. Does he know enough about lathes to tell how
good the condition is? Can/will he teach you how to use it?

$1000 - IMHO - is a lot to spend if all you ever want to do is
maintain the cues of you and your friends. So, one question you should
answer is: just what do you mean by repair?

Tips, ferrules, shaft polishes and wraps - all these can be done
on a lot less machine than the SB. Significantly more extensive work
means doing the job of 'cuemaking', whether you ever actually
make a cue or not.

One other point - you wouldn't be the first guy to start out doing
simple repairs with no intention of building cues, only to be bitten by
the bug... Besides, there are lots of productive things you can do
with a lathe, if you have one.

Dale<admitedly biased>
 
If you want portability the Unique is the way to go and it does the jobs you are looking for ... I have a CC3 and it's great for setting up anywhere , and you can do wraps , rings , butt caps , ferrels tips , sanding , polishing , or even fishing rods which I also use it for ... I haven't made any sneekies with it but you can ... It does sit around most of the time but is handy when I need it ... The Unique is the ticket for a mobile repair business...Good service & people from Jim And Bryan at Unique ...:cool:
 
I use many types of lathes

Several metal lathes, several cue specific lathes, and a cnc. If I were looking to maintain my cue and my friends, and had the money to spend on it, I would seriously consider the cue companion by unique. I have one for the portability at tournaments, and now like to do all my tip and ferrule work with it. For the money, it does a heck of a lot of varied tasks, and it takes up very little shop space. It is also great for linen wraps. That price mentioned above is more than fair for the cue companion 3.
The SouthBend is a nice lathe, i have one. But it is not a turnkey lathe for cue repair. They are famous for having worn ways near the chuck as they did not harden them at the factory. There will be a learning curve and you will need to purchase tooling. If you have months of time to spend and another thousand for tooling and idicators, you can make that SouthBend a cue maniac machine. But if you want to do repairs, and maybe make some simple 2 piece cues, stick with the Unique or Cuesmith. It fixes cues an hour out of the box!
 
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cuemaker03 said:
The solution is simple. Get both!!! That way you can do almost any job in cue repair.
Click to expand...

I have to agree. I bought Howard's Cue Companion ^ and it is nice, but I miss my Southbend. :( What was I thinking selling that?

Thanks to Howard for being great to deal with.

Courtney
 
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