I decided to treat myself!  After many years of very faithful service from my old Myford Mystro lathe, I have decided to upgrade.  There was nothing wrong with it, but I just decided to treat myself – perhaps I’m reaching that time of life!

Anyway, the first photo shows the good old faithful now sitting outside the workshop waiting to be sold.  Actually, i took so long to write this post, that it’s already been collected and is now hopefully providing good faithful service to its next owner.

But what to replace it with?  I made a shortlist but there’s nothing like seeing them in the flesh, so I decided to pay a visit to my favourite supplier – Stiles & Bates.  For me, that’s a fair round trip but it was worth it.  Both Gordon and Dave were extremely helpful in explaining the pros and cons of each on my shortlist, as well as the “add-on” implications (such as having to change my Nova chucks, not just the inserts).  I eventually (they were very patient!) chose the Galaxy DVR and have no regrets.  As you can see from the second photo, it’s already dusty!!

With all such changes, there are some things that are taking a bit of getting used to, but it’s an excellent piece of kit.  It has everything I want – an extensive range of speeds, extremely quiet, no vibration, holds the speed under load, and good clearance over the bed – although I may still treat myself at some point to the bowl outrigger.  I did have a minor teething problem, but their after-sales service was amazing.  It was sorted so quickly and efficiently that i had no down-time – important at this time of year with all my fairs coming up.

As I said – no regrets!