I know I mentioned in an earlier post that I bought a Grizzly and was happy with it so far. I had been thinking about this post and the comments and decided to weigh back in.
I had decided multiple times to buy a metal lathe, then not, so on and so on. I was maybe a little different in my thought process.....my father was a machinist, a tool and die maker, lathe operator and a periodically a mill. He always said he preferred a lathe and a year before he retired, bid back from tool and die to engine lathes, which was a decrease in pay, because it was more enjoyable to him. He has been deceased for 17 years now.....I have his tools, tool boxes, and some various things he must have "acquired" ( reamers, carbide cutters, etc). I felt it might be some backward way ti re-connect to him. After deciding to not buy a metal lathe, I always seemed to come back to looking at them. So I had set aside some money towards it and one day, I got a notification that the lathe I was looking at came off of backorder, and I just ordered it before I could change my mind again.
Would I get a grizzly again? I think so.....is it the pinnacle of lathes?...certainly not.
Many years ago I had started to purchase Porter Cable cordless tools....at the time they were a very good brand, second to maybe Milwaukee. They were all 12 volt....well as you know things have changed...the batteries got tired and I was walking through HD with my wife and they had one of their famous Ryobi displays.....5 tools for whatever price...I made the comment, oh that's kind of cool. A month later I opened my Christmas gifts to discover that very kit. Being a tool snob, I thought OMG! Being a good husband, I said," Wow, this is great!" That was ten years ago...I now have a huge collection of Ryobi tools and have never worn one out (admittedly they were not as good until Lithium batteries came out) I really do not regret ever going with Ryobi.
Are they the pinnacle? Certainly not....but I look at it this way....I do not use them every day...they do not make my living for me...I have 1/2 to 2/3 the cost in their tools I would in Milwaukee or DeWalt....I have never worn one out.... I can have two of these for the cost of one of those, even if I do wera one out. I'm happy. I look at my Grizzly the same way.
Sunday I had a friend over that has a mini lathe and let him turn a bowl on my Laguana Revo lathe. But, I really needed to drill about 15 pens, so I used my PSI pen blank chuck on the Grizzly. I was done in about 3 hours. While the Laguana is an awesome machine, I was impressed by how precision and "tight" the grizzly was. The Laguana has a 4" reach to the tail stock and the Grizzly only 2.5, which I did miss, but re-positioning was easy and always dead-on. I am not sure I will go back to Laguana to drill from now on.
I do have this strange kindred feeling to my Dad when I use it, but all that aside, I really do like it. It's a great tool. Am I going to use it all the time? No.....I have sawstop that I paid over $3000.00 for and planer that was 1500....on and on....do I use this all the time...no, this is just another tool in my shop. ( I'm not bragging about tools I have...I am 61 years old and have been doing this since I was 21...I should have good tools by now)
Just my .02, it is not my intent to counterdict anyone else....