Here's my two cents worth: I had heard about the Stubby, but had never seen one, because they aren't everywhere, as all have noted. A couple of years ago, a S750 (their flagship lathe) appeared on Craigslist at 10:30 Sunday night. I was the first to respond (beating a fellow club member by 1/2 hour), and as luck would have it, the lathe lived right near where I worked. I checked it out the next day, and jumped. It was the original owner, (an early AAW guy), and he had bought it directly from John Jordan. First one Jordan brought over - before it had "Jordan" in the casting. That was in '98 or '99. He was selling it for a significant discount - when I asked him why, he said he had tried to sell it a year ago for more, but a still very fair price, and had NO TAKERS. Unbelievable.
I since have had a couple of very nice email exchanges with Rod Caddaye, the current owner of Stubby. His dad was the original owner, and after he shut it down, Rod was able to revive it. He doesn't have an inventory - he builds to order, now. His business is family owned and operated - he's a good guy, genuine, a small-business owner all the way.
The lathe itself has a unique set of answers to the universal question of how best to use space. The sliding, rotatable bedways is its unique response. Robust AB and Powermatic and clones have the sliding headstock. Nova has the rotating headstock. Oneway has outboard turning. The closest response is the Robust Sweet 16, which has the removable section which can either open up a very large gap for big bowls, or be used to extend the spindle capacity. The Stubby slides the bed out of the way to create a huge bowl capacity, or to extend the spindle capacity. You then have the supplemental beds which can be hung parallel or at right angles to the main bed, and a second banjo, thereby creating a mind-boggling array of possible setups. The advantage is being able to approach whatever weird chunk you have mounted. 95% of the time I don't need all this, but the time I did a very deep form, I was really glad to have the extra banjo and bed capability. The relatively short footprint is nice if your space is compact. It still doesn't have the ultimate advantage of a dedicated bowl lathe - while short, the bed is still long enough that you can't just face the work from the tailstock end. And like all lathes, it has a few weird little quirks (spindle lock is awkwardly placed, etc.) But it does so many things so well, it's a premium lathe, for sure. Machining is precise and rock solid - the lathe bed locks into place perfectly aligned every time. And my 20+ year old lathe has run perfectly for the couple/three years I have owned it. No bearing issue, no motor issue - perfect.
There is a Stubby owners group on facebook. Nice folks.
I'm not quite at the cult-level (like some people around here
), but it's a fine machine. Emiliano's S1000 - that's a friggin' beast, my man. Only thing that compares to it would be something like a 2436 or AB or the like.
