TLDR - it’s a good, heavy duty lathe with a couple considerations. If you need a small footprint with large capacity it’s worth choosing.
The defining feature is the sliding bed. It’s how you get 30” swing and 40” spindle length in the footprint of a 20” lathe. Does it work well? Yes with one downside.
A motor slides the bed in and out. You can also disconnect the motor and move it by hand. Besides the benefit of being compact I’ve been using it instead of removing the tail stock for bowl hollowing. By sliding the bed several inches the tool rest still fits on the upper bed while the tail stock is out of the way (see picture). The downside is any shavings that fall between the upper bed ways and can get trapped in the space between the upper and lower ways. I like keeping things clean and so spend a couple of minutes after each session clearing the space with a shopvac. After turning some super wet wood I had some rust to clean out of this awkward location (also feel dumb for not covering the lathe better). Overall the sliding bed is a win, though, for me with space constraints. It’s a good choice if you have more room, there are just more options at that size.
All of the mechanical parts of the lathe are beefy. The banjo is massive and the tool rest is good and locks well. The tail stock quill has good range. The storage in my tail stock has stripped threads in the casting. Rikon support was great, someone picked up immediately, was friendly, and knowledgeable. They had new hardware in the mail in hours. I did need to align the headstock a little. The instructions were clear and the bolts easy to access, adjustment time was a few minutes.
Overall weight is around 600lbs and I’ve had 12” extremely wet oak rounds on and rarely had vibration issues. The 3HP motor does well on aggressive cuts using the low speed pulleys. In fact I’ve never taken it out of low speed doing bowls, the speed range is great. I see a low rpm around 20 and a high around 1,080 on the low pulleys.
The movable control box is plastic and feels much lighter than everything else but it doesn’t feel flimsy. The cord reaches anywhere you want to mount the lathe and is coiled so there is little slop. The magnets are plenty strong and the buttons are decent. The one issue is the speed control dial has no feedback when turning plus has low resistance. More than once I’ve bumped the speed up to maximum while turning on the lathe without realizing it! This is the #1 thing I’d like them to change. One of the product managers reached out to say they’ll review the idea. In 4 months it’s happened a handful of times, mostly when the box was in the right end of the lathe where it’s lower. I’ve asked one or two other owners if it’d happened to them and it had not.
Shipping and assembly
Everything came securely bolted to the pallet. Disassembly was all screws and bolts, no nails! Between a jet bandsaw, grizzly jointer, planer, and the lathe was the best packed.
To assemble, I cut the center of the pallet out with a sawzall. Then used a rolling car jack to lift a few inches to add blocking. A rolling lift table could then fit underneath (Harbor Freight 500# model). With the banjo and tail stock removed it lifted with no problem. One leg went on easy, but the table had to move to get out of the way of the other leg. The sketchiest part was stacking blocks to take the weight for a moment to move the lift table over.
The wheels came in later. They’re robust and move the lathe easily.
Thought I’d write this up since there are very few reviews online so far!
The defining feature is the sliding bed. It’s how you get 30” swing and 40” spindle length in the footprint of a 20” lathe. Does it work well? Yes with one downside.
A motor slides the bed in and out. You can also disconnect the motor and move it by hand. Besides the benefit of being compact I’ve been using it instead of removing the tail stock for bowl hollowing. By sliding the bed several inches the tool rest still fits on the upper bed while the tail stock is out of the way (see picture). The downside is any shavings that fall between the upper bed ways and can get trapped in the space between the upper and lower ways. I like keeping things clean and so spend a couple of minutes after each session clearing the space with a shopvac. After turning some super wet wood I had some rust to clean out of this awkward location (also feel dumb for not covering the lathe better). Overall the sliding bed is a win, though, for me with space constraints. It’s a good choice if you have more room, there are just more options at that size.
All of the mechanical parts of the lathe are beefy. The banjo is massive and the tool rest is good and locks well. The tail stock quill has good range. The storage in my tail stock has stripped threads in the casting. Rikon support was great, someone picked up immediately, was friendly, and knowledgeable. They had new hardware in the mail in hours. I did need to align the headstock a little. The instructions were clear and the bolts easy to access, adjustment time was a few minutes.
Overall weight is around 600lbs and I’ve had 12” extremely wet oak rounds on and rarely had vibration issues. The 3HP motor does well on aggressive cuts using the low speed pulleys. In fact I’ve never taken it out of low speed doing bowls, the speed range is great. I see a low rpm around 20 and a high around 1,080 on the low pulleys.
The movable control box is plastic and feels much lighter than everything else but it doesn’t feel flimsy. The cord reaches anywhere you want to mount the lathe and is coiled so there is little slop. The magnets are plenty strong and the buttons are decent. The one issue is the speed control dial has no feedback when turning plus has low resistance. More than once I’ve bumped the speed up to maximum while turning on the lathe without realizing it! This is the #1 thing I’d like them to change. One of the product managers reached out to say they’ll review the idea. In 4 months it’s happened a handful of times, mostly when the box was in the right end of the lathe where it’s lower. I’ve asked one or two other owners if it’d happened to them and it had not.
Shipping and assembly
Everything came securely bolted to the pallet. Disassembly was all screws and bolts, no nails! Between a jet bandsaw, grizzly jointer, planer, and the lathe was the best packed.
To assemble, I cut the center of the pallet out with a sawzall. Then used a rolling car jack to lift a few inches to add blocking. A rolling lift table could then fit underneath (Harbor Freight 500# model). With the banjo and tail stock removed it lifted with no problem. One leg went on easy, but the table had to move to get out of the way of the other leg. The sketchiest part was stacking blocks to take the weight for a moment to move the lift table over.
The wheels came in later. They’re robust and move the lathe easily.
Thought I’d write this up since there are very few reviews online so far!
