How much does it cost to build a rim lathe?
A basic rim lathe can cost between $900 and $1500 to build and equip. This is necessarily a failrly wide range because final cost will depend a lot upon how much you can do yourself and how much you must pay others to do for you. A tooling set can be made for as little as $50 if you have access to a machine tools and a metal supplier who sells odd lots of aluminum. Dan Pennington has engineered a way to add cross slides to an existing standard lathe and lathe bed. Click here for a description. This strategy is A LOT less expensive and the modifications to your lathe are reversible any time you want to go back to a standard configuration.
