Can anyone tell me about this lathe?

[autofix4u]

I have a coworker who is selling off his late uncles tools, he sent me picks of a lathe he has for sale.
I really want\need one but cannot go see ths one in person and dont know enough about them anyway.
My question is will this be big enough for gun work"barrels" and what is it worth?
Any input woul be great, thanks, Josh

[JIMinPHX]

It says Craftsman on the tag, but it's probably actually made by Atlas. If it's a 10" swing x about 30" between centers, then it's worth about $250 for the lathe itself & another $150 on top of that if it has all the change gears with it, assuming that it isn't messed up in some way. On the old ones like that, you have to physically change out gear sets to change the threading pitch or feed rate. If the change gears aren't there, good luck finding them & if you do, be prepared to shell out some gold.

If that is the smaller version of that lathe, with the 4" chuck, then cut those prices in half. The smaller one is not big enough for most barrel work. The 10" swing version may be big enough, depending on the size of the through hole in the spindle. That hole size varied depending on the year of manufacture.

They were good working little lathes though. I had one for years.

[AZ-Stew]

The tail stock, tool holder and gear cover (on the left) look a lot like my South Bend. Yours does not have the automated lead screw for cutting threads.

Ditto on the spindle bore. Mine's too small to push a barrel in from the left and do any crowning. It's also too small to begin work on a barrel blank. I still find a lot of uses for it, though.

Regards,

Stew

[jcwit]

Atlas Lathe sold by Sears. Not a bad lathe if all the gears and spacers are there, I have a 12 inch Atlas I rebuilt when I acquired it years ago and is dead accurate.

Any book or manuals with it so you know what parts you should have. Clausing bought all the Atlas tooling and parts, don't know just what they have left. There located in Goshen Indiana.

[Buckshot]

............There's been a lot of perfectly amazing machine work done on those flatbed Atlas lathes, but looking at 3 pictures and trying to decide if it's OKAY is really worse then useless. The best way to know is to DO something on it. Then you'll know for a fact. Looking okay and being okay can be miles apart.

.............Buckshot