Thread: Help, crippled by indecision

Well, today I went to pick up a couple of rotabroaches I bought on gumtree. And The chap was moving house, down the back of his shed was a CVA toolroom lathe, I asked if it was for sale. Long story short I have now bought it.

Im going to have to lose one of my two existing machines but I just dont know which way to go, I have almost finished bringing my Hembrug back and its very similar in size and specification (but doesnt have some of the fancy features of the CVA) Its partially tooled up and a lovely machine. Both are morse taper 2 in the tailstock, in some ways the Hembrug is a bit beefier as well as having metric threading capabilities.

My other baby is a 16" swing Macson which has some wear but still turns dead accurate and is completely tooled up as well as having capabilities outside what the others do.

What would your fine selves do?

The Ideal for me would be to find a semi local home for my Macson where I still might have occasional access to it so if anyone down my way is interested let me know.

Regards - Ralph

Hi Ralph,

I had a similar issue some years ago ! I had been given the use of a securable room in a factory building, about the size of a large garage. I kept a lot of stuff in there but I didn't visit it too often, maybe every six or eight weeks. When I did go to retrieve some stuff, I found the place locked up ! OK I thought, closed for a holiday, it was still closed two weeks later. I later discovered that the owner of the factory had gone bust and the the receiver had been called in.

When I finally got hold of the receivers and explained that I had goods inside the building that belonged to me and not the factory owner, I was asked to prove ownership, which for various reasons I was unable to do, even though I had the keys to the room. I found out later that they had cut the padlocks on the door, and everything had been removed and disposed of.

I also discovered that the building didn't actually belong to whom I thought was the owner, the bank having foreclosed some months before, it was the bank that called in the receivers.

So if you do find somewhere to store your lathe make sure that you can prove ownership, just in case.

Ah!! that is is where it went, it was listed on the web and then disappeared several hours later, from the photos at least, looked a nice machine, the original listed BIN was quite high, trust you got it for somewhat less. All the best with it, my only comment, 2 lathes, space permitting, are at times very useful to avoid having to take down a setup to make some intermediate piece of tooling that's maybe required, it sounds like 1 Imperial and 1 Metric would be ideal. All the best with it, Alan.

Hi Ralph,

Cash flow and space permitting this is what I would do, Once all three lathes are operational, use them and then after a while you will find that one of them in never/seldom used and that is the one to pass on.

Cheers

Piers

I think we need to see photo's of this CVA lathe, otherwise I don't believe it.

Originally Posted by .RC.

I think we need to see photo's of this CVA lathe, otherwise I don't believe it.

yep....or Ralph could just give you the CVA which would fix his indecision dilema

Hi there,

3 lathes and at a loss what to do? Oh the predicament!!!

Seriously though, how soon must you make a decision? 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years?

Time, space and funds permitting, Piers seems to have a good idea. You obviously bought the CVA for a reason, this leaves either the Macson or Hembrug to get rid of. If the fact that one is imperial and one is metric is a deciding factor, then it must be pretty close because I do imperial threads on my metric lathe all the time and have never really looked at it being a hardship or even an issue. You mentioned both turn quite accurately so I guess that's not an issue either. The Hembrug seems a similar size machine to the CVA which means you may consider that it's services are now duplicated with the CVA.

The fact that the Macson is only partially tooled up may an issue if it means you have no fixed or travelling steady etc, but if it's only tooling such as a QCTP etc. then they are easy to acquire. If that was the case then I would get rid of the Hembrug and keep the larger macson...... Assuming you really need the larger lathe that is?

Cheers,

Simon

Thanks for the feedback everyone, I have a month to get my house in order so i have decided to move the hembrug on, its just too similar in capacity to the CVA to justify keeping in my limited space, I got it because the work I do is either very small parts with very small holes being drilled (the CVA suits this slightly better than the hembrug as it has belt driven feeds which are super smooth as well as Taper attachment) or very large parts and faceplate work (Which the wornish macson suits because it is huge and has a big gap)

I hope someone on this forum takes her home

Ralph