CXRCY 12" x 18" Wood Lathe, Benchtop Wood Lathe Machine 3/4 HP Infinitely Variable Speed 650-3800 RPM with Goggle for Woodworking, Woodturning

I wasn't sure this would be good quality but I've been pleasantly surprised. Since setting it up I've turned almost 1 bowl/day and occasionally as many as 3 in one day. I've often worked with very fragile beetle tracked and spalted oak and both extremely soft and very hard blanks. The lathe has been very capable and precise, allowing me to turn 1/4" to 1/8" walls laced with throughgoing beetle tracks. The lathe is heavy enough to be stable on a rolling work table for all but the most unbalanced blanks. The drive motor is quite strong, as are the tailstock and banjo. I've been very satisfied. After 4 months of heavy use the motor suddenly wouldn't turn on. Contacted the vendor through Amazon and they were immediate in responding and offering to send the repair part. Very easy to deal with and very responsive. Repairs are done and back to turning. Check out a few of the pieces I've turned with this lathe. After 1.5 years and over 100 bowls the lathe stopped turning, working with the vendor and they're again being wonderfully responsive.

Buyer beware. This thing is trash. I had it packaged up for 5 months, unpacked recently and ran it for 4 hrs over 2 days. It is underpowered, throttled down with any work. The motor failed and burned up after 4 hours. Customer service is non existent. After reaching out, no response, no follow up, no parts replacement options. Chinese made garbage. Do not buy this for your own sake. Recommend buying from and with a US based seller that at least has a semblance of customer support and parts options. It might cost you a little more, but its worth it. Look elsewhere. Strongly recommend Amazon look into this seller and/or delist them for poor product reliability.

I built high end wood furniture and kitchens for over 45 years so I have owned several large lathes. I recently closed my business and moved to a small house so I needed a lathe that would not take up to much space and this fit the bill. The cons: The lathe is underpowered so it doesn’t work well for larger jobs. It is advertised as being able to do projects as large as 12”, but the motor just won’t handle something that big. It will do the job but it takes 4 times as long as it should. (I did have the tool rest break but that was after I modified the lathe to take a bigger motor, otherwise it would not have broken.) The pros: This lathe is pretty well made. Most of the components are well made and strong. I looked at a lot of lathes on Amazon and most of them for the same money were not made from cast parts but rather welded flimsy parts. The centers and chuck lined up on the money and the bearings had no play in them. I also like the variable speed motor. The photos that I am attaching of the chess pieces were made with the stock motor. The bowls were made after I converted the motor to a larger one. The lathe is made well enough to handle a bigger motor. If you are making small items like pens, chess pieces and small bowls I would recommend this lathe over all the others ones I found on amazon.

I have used this lathe for making large rolling pins, small chess pieces, pulleys, knobs and other random items. I maxed out with a giant 18" rolling pin blank which was almost 3.5" square out of jatoba, so it was super heavy and roughing it down made the motor work hard. I find the variable speed quite nice - I use it in the middle belt setting, which goes from 950 through 3000 RPM for me - I am going to try the highest belt setting and see how high the RPMs can go. I connected a Kill-a-Watt meter and observed when the motor was under heavy load of my carbide square roughing tool, it never measured above 300W power, 400VA....but it has a very slow refresh speed so it might not be the best judge of measuring motor horsepower. At the claimed 3/4 HP, this would be 746 * 0.75 = 560 Ws, but I have never observed that high. The spur center, live tailstock center and center plate are black steel, not pretty and shiny like Nova gear, but they get the job done. All standard measurements on this lathe - the threads on the headstock are the most common size, I forget the exact spec and the tapers in the headstock and tailstock are common MT2 - I was able to find a center screw and a higher quality live tailstock center as well as a Jacobs chuck very easily - I read somewhere that non-standard gear costs an arm and a leg so I was careful to select a lathe with very standard fittings. This lathe is identical to the one Grizzly sells for a lot more money and its well made and very heavy, I've not needed to bolt it down yet, but then I haven't tried turning big bowls on it yet, only spindle work till date.

Okay for small things like pens or 2” candlesticks. Way underpowered would never be able to make a bowl. Put in an unfinished 4” vase and I couldn’t cut anything without it stopping!!!