Colchester bantam
 

Following the advice of some members and having spoken to some other people, I'm now searching for a colchester bantam lathe or silmilar.
Anything considered
thanks for your help

try a ad on home workshop ive got all my machines off there and never had a bad buy

They come up on ebay , but the gears may be noisy , and they are still a small lathe .

Colchester Masters are a good size lathe, a bit longer in the bed. I have a late roundhead one and it is spot on! Bought it off ebay and it came fully tooled- look for one with all the chucks, steadies and whatever as it all adds up if you have to buy it afterwords.

Yes Ryan , I nearly said that last night . You see many more Students on ebay than anything else . Being larger they tend to fetch less , and there is a lot of gear around for them . The Master has another 1/2" centre height , and a bigger spindle . Read them up on the website Lathes for Sale , in the archive section . Go for an imperial one , which will also do metric screwcutting . The occasional Dominion ones did not have metric threads in the gearbox . Gap bed models have the handwheel on the right of the saddle , straight beds have it on the left . Make sure that the gap piece is with it , and all the chucks , steadies and faceplate . These are not interchangeable between Students and Masters , whatever anyone says . A good inverter with speed control will set you back about £200 , and enable you to use the original 3 phase motor with the connections changed to accept 220v 3 phase from the inverter . Only the later ' square head ' ones have clutches , unless you are very lucky indeed . Old round head ones can be very noisy in the gears , often in one speed in which they have done years of work . If they are that bad , wait for another one .