A couple of years ago I decided to invest in a lathe. I had some projects (probably more excuses than projects) so that time came with no surprise. I spent a few months checking which lathes were available and comparing prices, features, shipping and if they had some level of quality control guaranteed.

I don’t have space for a big lathe, so I ended up purchasing a small bench top lathe – an HBM, model 250×550 profi vario. I’m more interested in achieving a good level of precision rather than having capacity for big parts, so I think in terms of size this lathe will serve me well. 

I will make a lathe stand for it one day, but for now I’ll use it in a normal workbench – it’s far from ideal, but it will have to work until I have some time to think about the design of that stand. 

The first thing I did was to take the lathe apart. Why? Well, I have an itch and… sometimes I need to take things apart. And cleaning gets easier too. The end result of this process is quite scary because you’ll see things that cannot be unseen.