Tip and furule lathe

John Daminato said:
I hope you don't feel insulted, that wasn't my intention. My goal was to figure out what the differences are and now why one (yours) is 3x more expensive then the other. I came here to be educated in this area. Being that you build lathes and or sell them, I thought you could offer insight and explain to me and us why your product is better then another.

For example:

With my product you can do this but the competition you can't.

My product is 3x more expensive mainly because of this reason.


I also see very similar looking lathes on the net that are in the range of 600-700. Im looking for facts not "attitude"
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John, actually I can understand why Lee would be insultated. He started this thread as he sells and manufactures these lathes. It would be concidered bad manors to hijack his thread. If you have these kinds of questions or opinions then you may have wanted to start a new thread. His lathe is not the same as what you buy on e-bay or from a discount store. I happen to know what it cost to produce a quality lathe and can tell you that these prices are not out of line. Again not the thread for this kind of information as it isn't yours to hijack. Please concider starting a new thread.
jmho

Jim.
 
All mini metal lathes will have to have modifications and accessories added to be able to do cue repairs.

All the "cue repair lathes" come ready to plug in and do repairs. Hightower, Unique, Brianna, Porper & Todd Schultz are all building very similar styles and all do very similar tasks... the choice is yours, and everyone will have personal opinions of each- pros/cons!

Here's a personal story...

I bought my first Hightower Mid-Size lathe (slightly used) for $500 & a McDermott cue, spent about $150 in tips, glue, sandpaper and papertowels. Got a broken house cue and cut a 30" shaft off and tiped, retiped, cut tenon for ferrule and repeated this until I was down to about 2" of shaft left... threw it away!

A month later I set up at a local tournament, Fri-Sun and did $1400 in repairs... so you can make your money back very quickly if you want to! This doesn't happen every tournament, but a few times a year at different events! Now 8 years later I'm building cues and doing repairs on a part time basis and have a steady income from repeat customers and referrals!

I do about 8-10 tip repairs, 8-10 shaft reconditioning each week and a new ferrule averages 1 every 2 weeks!

Zim
 
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For sure, you buy a box of triangles and some superglue...go set up on league night...would not take me that many league nights to use up a box of 50 tips...which costs what $30+/- and another 10 for a couple tubes of glue? You just made $450 off of $50 spent. Thats without doing any shaft conditioning at all.

Plus you know how much leaguers like to bang up their cues, and change their tips every other day b/c they are CRACKED OUT ON THE TIP PICK! Think they are miscueing b/c the tip is wrong lol.

You can get into doing basic repair for well under 2k with everything your going to need. THere is all kinds of business out there for the repair man, if you have a lathe and cant find repair work in your area then there must not be any pool players lol. Hell I just finished my cue and already had an offer to sell it, said no but it would have been 2/3 the cost of what i spent on the lathe. I figure that lathe will payfor itself in a month or so, and I work offshore 7&7. Two nights a week at the local pool hall is 4 times a month so it'll do good. Plus figure in wrap and other work.
 
As stated there are cheap lathes on ebay and here built at home by do it yourselfers these are 1 st quality machines that are built to last a lifetime
like anything else you get what you pay for some of these others are flash in the pan type sellers here to make a quick buck gone tomorrow your left holding the bag and imports are ok but basicaly junk if they break your out of luck if i was buying something I want qaulity first and someone thats been around for some time for instance chris or myself I belive we both started in 1988 I like to buy once and be done with it there a lot of parts on my machines that we make ourselfs in a first rate machine shop
100 % USA made!
 
Ok thanks, now Im a little closer to understanding the differences and possible ways to recoup the investment.

I think all in all I actually brought more attention to this thread and Brianna products...:)

I will start my own thread with this vs that lathe questions..


Thanks guys..
 
understanding the differences

John Daminato said:
Ok thanks, now Im a little closer to understanding the differences and possible ways to recoup the investment.

I think all in all I actually brought more attention to this thread and Brianna products...:)

I will start my own thread with this vs that lathe questions..


Thanks guys..
Click to expand...

Why not just search the forum for all the threads comparing the different lathes being used, there are quite a few available, ya just gotta do a bit of searching. When you're done, maybe you could provide a synopsis of the pro's and con's of what you found to the AZ community..... just a thought
 
I'm kinda doing that, but again it might take a tremendous amount of time to do so and you end up going through a lot of information that essentially doesn't even pertain to the cause. I think I have a better idea.
 
John,
here is an informative link http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=173718&highlight=lathe+mods
on what one guy did to modify a bench top lathe to take to tourney's and do repairs, not saying it's necessary to do the same but it should give you an idea of what could be involved.

Now factor if he would have to pay someone to do these mods and it may give a little more insight on the cost difference.

Also consider that Chris, Lee, and Todd also built these lathe's to allow people to "add-on" certain pieces and expand the capability of the lathe from when it was first purchased.

Good luck on your venture:thumbup:
 
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