I’ve been on the lookout for a budget lathe. I might call about this one, but wanted to run it by you lathe guys first. I looked up Seneca Falls lathes and it seems like some of these 100 year old ones still run well.
For that price, pick it up and if it doesn’t work for you, put it back on clist in the home furnishings section as an industrial console table for $1000.
The age of the lathe is less relevant than if it is still in tolerance and I will leave that for an expert, which I am not…
I’m not a lathe expert, but I do love old vintage machinery made in the good old USA 
Thanks ReMan. If I look at it I’m taking my dad, a retired machinist.
I honestly owned one similar/same to the one in the pictures… my buddy got it off of “an old man” that died owning the lathe. H got it, but, never had the nerve to put it together and “play” with it.
He sold it to me cheap (300, plus got all the tooling). I didnt have a place to put it up, nor did i know then anything about lathes, so, i gave it to my neighbor. HE uses it, and bought lots of tooling for it, and it makes a lot of nice stuff.
the only thing i can think of? is that my neighbor claims it has “no thread cutting” really. All i can figure is that the speeds and feeds on this machine must then be geared towards getting the right cutting speeds on various metals and various sizes of stock.
if what my neighbor tells me is accurate? then, i am happier with my tiny chinese tabletop lathe because at least i have threads… but aside from cutting threads? the machine works well. I have watched him make some pieces.
I honestly looked at my cheap 7x10 lathe as ust a couple hundred dollar education so i could learn how to run a lathe. I think a 9x19 or thereabouts would suit me perfectly.
That lathe would make a nice companion piece ror my Champion drill press (1954 model according to research on the serial number). FWIW, the previous owner was an employee of BFGoodrich and it was used for decades to produce landing gear for planes under both military and civilian contracts. RIP Ray Bentlijewski.
Does it have a threader? Pitch selector? Offer him 200- , probably wants it gone, good time to snap up a good deal. Maybe though, its pretty old. Check the motor and chuck runout.
It all depends on what you want to use it for, that’s an old lathe but there’s nothing wrong with that, condition is everything including wear on the bed and how well the lathe has been maintained.
We need a thread devoted to lathes, quite a few member’s appear to have them and it would be interesting to see what everyone is using. I have a post WWII Denford, it has some wear on the bed and lining up the tailstock with the chuck is a problem. I’ve started to look at machine auctions to see how much a better one would go for, plenty on Ebay in the UK but too many potential buyer’s so it’s difficult to get a bargain.
Not Sure the details,but the style and appearance look good.
I recently picked this Lambercier lathe (swiss) it’s quite old - but I got it for a mere £80! it had tonnes of stuff with it too.
One thing that worries me every time I switch it on is the ceramic ‘resistor?’ (in the picture it’s the bit above the motor with the red and black wire going into it) I would love to replace it with something safer lol, a puff of smoke comes from it every time you switch the motor on! also its live so wouldn’t touch it. it’s like a coil of spring wrapped around a ceramic coil type thing.
Haven’t got round to using it yet, as awaiting some bits from Banggood.
In addition to checking the condition of the machine you need to check that all the parts are there (including gearsets) or that they can till be obtained. If you don’t have the needed parts and can’t get them, a machine tool is nearly worthless beyond it’s scrap metal price.
I have an old “Craftsman” hobby lathe which was made before “Atlas” did their production and there are no parts available for it. I have one set of gears which don’t offer any useful thread pitches. Essentially all mine is good for like this is manual turning and boring which is still useful but not anywhere near what it could do with all the gearsets which were made for it.
Phil
Nice old lathe G0OSE. I reckon it would look good with my power hacksaw.
I removed the link in my first post as the lathe was no longer available. I’m still on the lookout, but if I don’t find anything I may just go with a Grizzly mini.