Teknatool Mercury Mini Lathe

The only thing mini about this lathe is its physical size!

Specifications:

½ HP variable speed high torque 90V DC motor. Speed controller wired for 110V.
3 step pulley for optimum power bands - yields a speed range of 200-5350 RPM suitable for everything from bowl turning to high speed turning and sanding.
Swing over bed 8" (200 mm), swing over toolrest 6"
Outboard capacity 14" with outrigger unit.
Distance between centers 11", can be increased with 12" add-on bed segments.
One piece cast iron headstock and bed
Heavy duty ball bearing headstock spindle (I mean really heavy duty)
57 lb (24 kg)

Review

A great little lathe! Very sturdy, ridgid and solid! Pretty much vibration free! After many hundred hours of heavy use (I turn mostly small bowls and lidded boxes), headstock spindle has NO slop. Despite its "small" capacity (compared to other mini lathes on the market today), it is capable of doing a lot!

I added a half bed segment to increase the capacity between centers a little (mostly so I could slide the tailstock aside). It does not have a lot of power, which could be seen as a shortcoming. However, this has forced me to work in a different way than if I had a more powerful motor. Sharp tools and light cuts are the key words for successful turning with this lathe. I have turned pens, boxes, bowls and tool handles on this lathe.

Largest inboard diameter is 8"

The lathe is small and heavy for its size, but still requires a sturdy stand (or a table top mount) if you want to turn things larger than pens and bottle stoppers. For some time I had mounted my Mercury Mini Lathe to a shop built bench with about 100 lb. of sand in the bottom. System worked fine, but I found that I really needed to be able to get around on all sides of the late for the kind of work I do, using some special (home made) tools. This was hard to do on the bench, so I started looking for another solution. Checked out stands sold in stores, but found them to be too flimsy for me. So I checked out stands sold for other machinery and tools. I ended up with a stand from Grizzly - it is used for a metal press, weighs about 90 lb. Doing a few modifications so the center part can be filled with sand, increased the weight with about 200 lbs - without it getting top heavy. It also reduced the footprint of the lathe itself.

I did break the motor shaft once as I had tightened the belt too much. The shaft broke inside the motor. The manual did say that one should be careful about this, but I had overlooked it.... Luckily, I could get a new motor from Teknatool within a week, and the cost was low enough to be worth replacing the motor instead of buying another lathe...

For dust collection, I use a Rockler Tabletop Dust Fitting (also called a Big Gulp Dust Hood) mounted to a Rockler 4" FlexForm dust collection hose - mounted to my lathe, and then hooked up to a blastgate and to the dust collector hose. I spray painted the Big Gulp with gloss white paint so light could be reflected back.