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I wonder how much YouTube and younger generations are turning this trend around. I got interested in machining as an extension of general making thanks to Adam

I wonder how much YouTube and younger generations are turning this trend around. I got interested in machining as an extension of general making thanks to Adam Savage, ThisOldTony, and a host of others. Between the pandemic and the Us-China tarifs spats the lead time on a new hobby lathe from someone like Precision Matthews is 3+ months, and prices are through the roof for both new and used old iron. Anecdotally, a bunch of others in the amateur space seem to be knowledge workers and programmers who want to do something more physical.

bsder 5y ago
Is this really the spat causing issues? I see the standard Chinesium lathes (like the Seig's or HiTorque) seem to be just as available as usual at the same price as usual. I suspect that the Precision Matthews issues are that they drained inventory and now that orders are picking up, lead times are going nuts. Those lathe beds probably require a decent amount of hand scraping after coming from China and if they quit doing that during the Covid shutdown, it will take a while to get the pipeline back up to speed. Given that Precision Matthews is in Pittsburgh, probably the only thing that couldn't readily be built domestically fairly quickly is the outer casting. And I suspect even that could be built in Pittsburgh or Cleveland.