This is a review that I left on Amazon a long time ago.
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It’s about a wood lathe purchase my wife made back in 2008.
(PSI is Penn State Industries)

Full Time

 Last ChapterReviewed in the United States on January 23, 2009

Get a cup of coffee and sit back in your easy chair for a spell and I’ll tell you a little story called “The Nightmare Before (and after) Christmas”.

My wife bought this lathe for me as a Christmas present, wasn’t that nice of her? Quite frankly, I was shocked on Christmas morning, and elated!

30 minutes into it the motor just stopped, didn’t overheat. Unplugged the motor from the speed unit and connected power directly to it, still wouldn’t work.

Called PSI the next day and spoke to Judy who referred me to Joe Roberts and he told me to send the motor and speed unit to them and they would immediately check it out and send me a new one (cost me $15 to send it back). That was lie 1.

A week later I called them to see what’s up and Joe Roberts told me the motor hadn’t come in yet but he would call me when it did. Lie 2.

3 days later I called again and Judy told me she couldn’t find Joe but she’d have him call me. Lie 3.

At this point I start documenting this stuff.

I called the next day and Joe said he didn’t remember talking to me before but would check the motor and call me back but he never did. Lies 4&5.

I called the next day and Judy told me they were having inventory so there was no way my motor had been received by them and transferred me to someone’s voicemail so I left a message, and no one ever called me back. sigh.

I called back and asked to speak to Joe and he told me because it was Friday he’d send me a new motor the following Monday. So on Tues I called and Joe said he sent the motor on Mon and would call me the next morning (Wed) with the tracking number. He didn’t call. Lie 6.

I called the following Tues and Joe said he didn’t send the motor and forgot to call me but he had a new motor in hand and would send it to me that day and call me the next morning with the tracking number.

Now we are up to today, Jan 22, and I spoke to Joe this morning and he said he sent the motor yesterday and would call me back with the tracking number which he did, but the tracking number showed (via the UPS website) that what he shipped only weighed 2.3 lbs and was going to a different state than where I lived.

I called back and Joe said there was a mix up and he’d call me back with the correct tracking number. He never did. I don’t know how many times he has lied to me at this point.

So here it is, exactly 1 month since this lathe was purchased and paid for and all I have is a heavy piece of metal that doesn’t do anything and a severe case of irritation over this whole mess.

If I don’t have a new motor and speed unit by close of business on Monday the 26th of Jan I’m going to box the thing up and send it back to Amazon.

I mean really, have you ever heard of anything like this before?

I haven’t, and I don’t think a customer should have to go through this, especially with a Christmas present. Some gift.

I can’t recommend this machine due to the irresponsible performance of the people that work for PSI.

Oh yeah, one more thing, this Joe Roberts has a nasty little laugh he does almost constantly while talking that just drives you up the wall.

If it was up to me he would be standing in the soup line right now.

And all I wanted to do was spin pieces of wood to resemble visions in my mind……..

Part Deux:

Its now been about 4 months since this lathe was purchased.
As stated above dealing with Penn State has been a nightmare, specifically the enormous amount of lying by the guy in charge named Joe. He’s still there and he’s still lying.

Anyway, in frustration I scoured the web and found out there are 2 parts to the Penn Sate industry and up to that point I had been dealing with the part that was mentioned in the User Manual at […].
Don’t call that number unless you are a glutton for abuse.

Instead, call […] and speak to Mark ( […] ). When I called he was the one that answered the phone. You can tell instantly that Mark knows what he’s doing and he is used to getting stuff done, and solving problems.

Mark told me their lathes are made in China and recently they have been having a lot of problems with them as I outlined above and he had no solution for me but he said he would send me a new motor and speed controller which he did and they arrived in a few days. The same problem occurred. The lathe initially worked fine then out of nowhere it stopped and wouldn’t come on again. A few days later it would come on but would then go off again. I called Mark and he sent me a 3rd motor. That motor has worked fine to this day. However, there have been a few times when it would stop for no apparent reason and after pushing the reset button on the speed control unit it would run again.

I still don’t know the reason why this thing acts like it does nor does Mark, however I now have 2 extra motors and 1 extra speed control for backup.

Here’s what I think.
I think the issue is in the speed control unit, specifically, the reset switch. It doesn’t has a positive feel to it when you press it. You can’t tell if its been pressed or not when you press it. The button itself seems loose in the housing and its just a matter of luck if it makes a connection or not. One of these days I’ll get around to purchasing an after market push button switch and see if that clears the problem up.

Having said all of that, in the past 3 months I have turned over 300 pens and various other things and am very happy with the quality of the unit except as indicated above.

Last week I decided to turn a small bowl which means using the included faceplate. After turning the bowl I went to remove the faceplate from the lathe and realized that a special tool is necessary to do so and it was not included with the stuff that came with the lathe. The main shaft in the headstock has 2 small holes drilled into it and I inserted a cylindrical drift pin into it while turning the faceplate with a 1″ open end wrench and it came undone.

I called the original Penn State number and requested the special wrench that was missing and that idiot Joe said no problem, he’ll send me one, then he asked if I purchased the lathe from them. I had already given him the serial number and he looked me up in the database. I told him I purchased it from amazon and he said, “Well that’s a whole different story, you’re gonna have to send me a copy of your receipt so I can verify it.” So now I have to find the receipt and go somewhere and make a copy of it and snail mail it to him in order to fix a problem THEY created by not including the wrench in the first place. Well, Monday morning I’m calling Mark and see what he says and if he says he’ll send me a new wrench I’m gonna tell him he needs to fire that idiot Joe.

I hope no one else has to go through what I have and if you do have problems I hope the info above helps out.
It really is a decent lathe but unfortunately the support is horrendous and its up to pure luck how your history will be with it.

Epilogue

Here it is a little more than a year later and I have no good news to add to this review.
In the past year this lathe has brought me ecstasy and agony (kind of like being married) but mainly the latter.
It is very unpredictable and that is frustrating. If I knew what was wrong I’d fix it, but I don’t so I can’t.

Just this morning I turned a pen, then stopped to eat lunch. When I came back to finish the pen the motor would not come on. I pressed the reset switch a gazillion times and still nothing. I tried 2 different motors and 3 different variable speed switches and still the thing does not work. Irritating. So I just fired off another email to Mark at Penn State ( […] ), I doubt anything will get done about it.

In the past year, while dealing with an at times severely handicapped lathe, I have managed to turn about 300 pens and 30 bowls up to 9.5″ dia x 5″ deep and various other things like gavels, mallets, candle sticks, finials, etc., maybe 500 items all said and done. But because of the way this lathe works or doesn’t work it took 10 times longer to do all those things. You see, my problem was that I quickly became severely addicted to turning stuff. I can take a piece of raw material, say a piece of hickory from a tree that blew down in our yard, and then in the magical realm of the corner of my office convert that old chunk of wood into something everybody just drools over. Serious. Its easy to make bad stuff look good on a lathe if you pay attention, settle for nothing but the best and never quit. My 3 rules for life. Because the lathe is inherently dangerous you MUST pay attention and stay focused. I’ve had a few minor mishaps, while wiping the shaving off the tool-rest my finger got caught against the spinning material and yes I was rewarded with a nice blood blister for that infraction. I was holding a piece of 4/0 steel wool against a piece of wood and it caught and exploded, blowing the flotsam all up in my face and the whole area – what a mess. And I even had a few items fly clean off the lathe, over my shoulder and hit the wall on the other side of the room. I also have a few scars on the backs of my knuckles from rubbing against the edge of spinning bowls. Did I mention how much sawdust these things create? Jayziss. I have 3 60gallon trashcans full of that stuff and I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. Just one bowl will generate about 5 gallons of shavings. Funny, you put a $20 piece of walnut on the lathe and then about $15 worth of it ends up on the floor.

I found turning to be sort of like therapy. I can stand there for hours working my art and thinking about stuff. You get a certain song going through your head like they do and you start thinking about a certain topic and the next thing you know 6 hours have flown by and you’ve solved all the worlds problems too, and that dam song is STILL going through your head. I can’t tell you how many times in the past year I’ve been late to supper, late taking the dogs out, late to just about everything. Time seems to fly when I’m turning. Its only when the sun goes down that I’m aware that time has elapsed from day into night, meanwhile I keep staring at this spinning object in front of me and observing the minutest of detail, making sure everything is exactly perfect.

I’ve made lots of mistakes, some of them major and cannot be repaired, but most of them have been minor and that’s where the creative mind comes into play – how to take a damaged thing and change it into a thing of beauty. Sometimes I’ll just take it off the lathe and set it aside for a day/week/month before I come back to it, and turn other things in the meantime. Like I said, its addictive.

All in all I am really infatuated with the art / skill of turning materials on a lathe but sadly this is not the lathe to do this on, at least not right now. It won’t work.

So, I am out a couple hundred dollars, er my wife is – remember, she bought it for me as a Christmas present and as of right now Its not a working lathe.

I still can’t recommend this lathe for the obvious reasons and suggest that if you are interested in a lathe of this size to look elsewhere, maybe a Jet.

Me? I think I’m going to move up to a larger lathe by another manufacturer, not sure who yet, and I’ll just set this one in a dark corner of the garage and maybe someone in the distant future can figure out what to do with it.
But when I do get a new lathe rest assured I will come right back here to Amazon and deliver an amazing review for you to enjoy.

PS: I was just over at the Penn State website ( […] ) and noticed they no longer have any version of this lathe available. It appears they have a new lathe coming out in March of 2010 and in their listings it has better specs all the way around than this series I am writing about. It looks like this old series of lathes are being phased out so I’d have even more reservations about buying one as repair parts and service will most likely be scarce. Caveat Emptor.

Good luck and happy turning.
The Full Time Wood Wizard
70 people found this helpful

I have a floor lamp similar to that that has been in a state of restoration for over a year. It’s old, maybe early 1900’s, and belonged to my father in laws parents and he inherited it when they died back in the 60’s. I inherited it from him when he died in 2008.

It has a large wooden “disk” as the base and the top of it is grooved as such that when my FIL was a little boy he raced little cars around on it.

I made a makeshift “lathe” for it on one of my workbenches so I could sand it down, fix some blemishes and apply new finishes to it. That’s the stage it’s at now, half the finish has been applied and sanding and more finish must be installed.

I found an online source for vintage lamp parts and I bought a new cloth braided 3 wire cord, bakelite plug, triple socket with pull chains and a harp and a large cloth shade that resembles a flappers dress from the 1920′. Before I install the new velvet board and feets on the bottom I’ll sandblast my FIL’s name and birth-death dates inside. One of these days I’ll get it completed.