CHRIS_WNC
Member
I had a little desktop lathe before. I ended up selling it and my little mills a while back. Recently, I've been having weird gun ideas and have been dependent on very helpful out of state people help me finish the projects. That was getting very annoying, to me, and I'm sure to most of them 
, so I bought a Grizzly G0709 14 x 40 Gunsmith Lathe.
I had it delivered to my work so the truck driver wouldn't have to worry about my long private driveway. Grizzly shipped rapido. It was sitting at the UPS hub less than 20 miles from my delivery location in two days. It sat at the hub almost a week until I instigated a "where the hell is my crate" call to UPS Freight. It was delivered last Tuesday.
Here are some pictures that I took during unboxing, hauling home, and setup in my little shop in the basement garage.
Here it is as it came off the truck. One big wooden crate that smelled like moldy oil.
Box walls torn apart and more moldy oil smell! The accessories were in the lower portion. Packaging was pretty good and I didn't have any pieces rattle loose and fall/scrape up anything.
It was assembled already so I just had to handle moving it where I wanted it to go. Here it is off of the lower crate and with some pipe through the "lift points" that are conveniently there. I removed the lower crate/pallet so that I could move it easier when I got it home. I don't have a tall shop. It is a normal garage door opening and my Deere with front end loader was only going to get me to just inside the door.
I needed a way to lift it up and over the rail on my trailer and to be able to pick it up at home with the tractor. I came up with this.
The Chinese 4x4 was bowing like a mofo, so I ended up bolting on a piece of angle iron on the top to help with that. Here it is on my trailer. I lag bolted it down to the bed and strapped down everything else.
I didn't get pictures of unloading it at home but it was a painless process. I used the forks to lift the 4x4 harness thingy and moved it over to the smooth concrete inside the shop. I dropped it down onto a couple of 4x4 blocks. From there my son and I pushed it into position with the two pallet jacks. They were a life saver! They really helped me move this 1500 pound contraption around in my small area.
When it was in it's spot, I again put it down on the 4x4 blocks. I bought some antivibration leveling feet about a decade ago when I had a (not approved by the wife) lathe purchase on my brain. I needed to get them under the lathe and get all of the weight over to them instead of the 4x4 blocks or pallet jacks. I set the height adjustments high enough to remove the other supports and got them out of the way. Then I slowly adjusted them down to their lowest setting. Here are the feet I was talking about.
I used a 12" Starrett level to set front-rear and left-right level on everything. Here it is all leveled out for the initial setup. See how my floor is lower on the left side. I have to level again after it settles in in a few days.
And finally, here it is all set up ready to use.
I did the gearbox break-in over two days. It required me to run through each gear speed, forward and reverse, for 10 minutes. At the end of that I drained the oil and refilled with fresh. The receptacle wiring was very easy. I already had a junction box set a few feet from where the lathe was going. It was a simple 240v single phase circuit. When I did the initial power-up, nothing happened. I freaked out. I double then triple then quadruple checked all of my wiring to make sure everything was ok. I then moved on to the onboard transformer that is used for the contactor control circuits inside the lathe. No output on it at all. Nothing. I pulled the control board and checked the terminals on the transformer and I found one of the 240v input legs (it was a hair thin wire) had a bad solder or broke from its terminal. I soldered it back to where it needed to go and applied power again. It worked then. Disaster and lots of down time averted!
I had some test equipment from before. Dial calipers, micrometers, levels, indicators, stands and that type of stuff. I still ended up spending another thousand + on some tooling, a fixture/spider for the 4 jaw, and some more measuring equipment. I also picked up a cheapy DRO for the tailstock. I see that reamers are going to be $80+ each. Barrel blanks range from $40 to much much higher. Go -no go gauges for the different calibers will start adding up too. Good thing the lathe was on sale!
CHRIS
, so I bought a Grizzly G0709 14 x 40 Gunsmith Lathe. I had it delivered to my work so the truck driver wouldn't have to worry about my long private driveway. Grizzly shipped rapido. It was sitting at the UPS hub less than 20 miles from my delivery location in two days. It sat at the hub almost a week until I instigated a "where the hell is my crate" call to UPS Freight. It was delivered last Tuesday.
Here are some pictures that I took during unboxing, hauling home, and setup in my little shop in the basement garage.
Here it is as it came off the truck. One big wooden crate that smelled like moldy oil.
Box walls torn apart and more moldy oil smell! The accessories were in the lower portion. Packaging was pretty good and I didn't have any pieces rattle loose and fall/scrape up anything.
It was assembled already so I just had to handle moving it where I wanted it to go. Here it is off of the lower crate and with some pipe through the "lift points" that are conveniently there. I removed the lower crate/pallet so that I could move it easier when I got it home. I don't have a tall shop. It is a normal garage door opening and my Deere with front end loader was only going to get me to just inside the door.
I needed a way to lift it up and over the rail on my trailer and to be able to pick it up at home with the tractor. I came up with this.
The Chinese 4x4 was bowing like a mofo, so I ended up bolting on a piece of angle iron on the top to help with that. Here it is on my trailer. I lag bolted it down to the bed and strapped down everything else.
I didn't get pictures of unloading it at home but it was a painless process. I used the forks to lift the 4x4 harness thingy and moved it over to the smooth concrete inside the shop. I dropped it down onto a couple of 4x4 blocks. From there my son and I pushed it into position with the two pallet jacks. They were a life saver! They really helped me move this 1500 pound contraption around in my small area.
When it was in it's spot, I again put it down on the 4x4 blocks. I bought some antivibration leveling feet about a decade ago when I had a (not approved by the wife) lathe purchase on my brain. I needed to get them under the lathe and get all of the weight over to them instead of the 4x4 blocks or pallet jacks. I set the height adjustments high enough to remove the other supports and got them out of the way. Then I slowly adjusted them down to their lowest setting. Here are the feet I was talking about.
I used a 12" Starrett level to set front-rear and left-right level on everything. Here it is all leveled out for the initial setup. See how my floor is lower on the left side. I have to level again after it settles in in a few days.
And finally, here it is all set up ready to use.
I did the gearbox break-in over two days. It required me to run through each gear speed, forward and reverse, for 10 minutes. At the end of that I drained the oil and refilled with fresh. The receptacle wiring was very easy. I already had a junction box set a few feet from where the lathe was going. It was a simple 240v single phase circuit. When I did the initial power-up, nothing happened. I freaked out. I double then triple then quadruple checked all of my wiring to make sure everything was ok. I then moved on to the onboard transformer that is used for the contactor control circuits inside the lathe. No output on it at all. Nothing. I pulled the control board and checked the terminals on the transformer and I found one of the 240v input legs (it was a hair thin wire) had a bad solder or broke from its terminal. I soldered it back to where it needed to go and applied power again. It worked then.
Disaster and lots of down time averted!I had some test equipment from before. Dial calipers, micrometers, levels, indicators, stands and that type of stuff. I still ended up spending another thousand + on some tooling, a fixture/spider for the 4 jaw, and some more measuring equipment. I also picked up a cheapy DRO for the tailstock. I see that reamers are going to be $80+ each. Barrel blanks range from $40 to much much higher. Go -no go gauges for the different calibers will start adding up too. Good thing the lathe was on sale!
CHRIS
