Gunsmithing Opinions on Jet lathe and mill

[slayer_21420]

Hey all, I'm looking at buying out an entire gunsmithing/machine shop. The current owner bought the two of these machines new in 1999 when he retired from a 28 year long career as a tool maker. He is selling because he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and isn't able to make use of it anymore, everything has been kept very clean and meticulously maintained. These 15 year old machines look like they are a year old.

The lathe is a Jet BDB-1340, and the mill is a Jet JTM-2 with power feed and Newall DRO. both machines are Taiwanese and as I said, they are CLEAN. Any of you have experience with these models? Good/Bad? These both come with a metric shit ton of tool holders/ collets and carbide tooling etc. I'm very green in the art of machining but have a veteran machinist willing to offer up his knowledge to get me started.

Also anyone who knows what fair market value is on the two of these machines I'd appreciate that as well.

Thanks for any and all advice/info

Steve

 

[FCrifles]

Thousands of great rifles have been built on Jet Machines. I would turn to your Machinist friend for his opinion on the machines. Have him look them over for you and give an honest opinion. If he is too busy, offer him a little money or a mass quantity of beer for his expertise. it may get you the deal of the century or save you a lot headache.

 

[flylo]

Check the models for parts availability.Being that old I bet you on your own.

 

[slayer_21420]

Check the models for parts availability.Being that old I bet you on your own.

That's not all that very old I don't think? It looks as if both models are still offered new from Jet, so I don't think parts should be an issue.

 

[flylo]

Your call but I'd check & I'm not saying it's a deal killer but it may affect the value if any of them are orphened. Jet is bad about doing this. Chevy still makes the Camaro but I don't think the parts will fit my '69. 25 year old asian equip is old. IMHO I'd make a phone call to be sure.

 

[slayer_21420]

I'll call and check into it for sure, they are 15 years old though.

 

[carlsbad]

I have a Jet GH 1340 lathe that I bought about the same time. I'm not sure what the difference is in the 2 models but it looks identical and may be some of the accessories that came with it. Mine didn't come with a collect setup, for example.

The lathe is made in china and I was disappointed with the quality. Jet was very good at sending me replacement parts and I replaced the compound slide 3 times until I got a somewhat stable slide. But basically, the compound slide is somewhat underdesigned. I've toyed with trying to adapt one with a wider footprint but I've made this one work pretty well. I replaced most of the Chinese fasteners on the lathe with US capscrews. I did a lot of adjustment and some lapping to the ways to get the slides working smoothly and holding steady to avoid chatter. I can now take some pretty huge and smoking (literally) cuts when roughing stainless steel. The lathe has plenty of power and speed options. So bottom line, I'm pretty good at tuning up a lathe and I've used it for astronomical and gunsmithing projects, often with very high accuracy requirements and been successful.

I have a friend who is an excellent machinist, perhaps better than me, but isn't as good at tuning a Chinese lathe. He bought the same lathe (they were on sale) and has never had good surface finish. He recently retired and has spent perhaps 100 hrs building a larger seating surface for the compound slide, stoning the ways, adjusting preload on spindle bearings, etc and I think he now has it working well.

So the bottom line is, the quality of the equipment depends on how good the previous owner was at tuning it up. If he has been making good projects successfully for all these years, I would guess he has it well tuned.

If it has a DRO and significant tooling, it should be worth at least $5k, depending on the tooling. But If you can affford it, a lahte like the clausing in the thread "lathe porn" would be quite a joy compared to the jet.

As for the mill, I bought an old Brideport with a DRO for about $3000. My buddy bought a grizzley and there is no comparison in quality. I'd prefer an old bridgeport or similar to a Chinese lathe.

--Jerry