Am I the only one who bought a fancy toolpost holder that didn't fit?

I ordered a quick change toolpost holder for my lathe off an online auction last month for $85. Looked perfect in the photos but when it showed up the dovetail was 3/8 inch too narrow to clamp onto my compound. Tried grinding it down a little but ruined the hardening and now it sits in my junk drawer. Anybody else get burned by online tooling that looked right but was totally wrong?

2 comments

2 Comments

phoenix57314d ago

I used to think you could measure off the screen and it would be close enough, but that 3/8 inch gap changed my mind real fast. I bought a set of collets off the same kind of auction and they were advertised for a specific spindle thread but the threads were metric not standard. Ended up sending them back for a refund but it cost me half what I paid in shipping. Now I measure everything three times and still get burned sometimes. Online tooling is a gamble unless you can put hands on it first.

-1

the_jamie14d ago

Wait, are you saying you paid half what the collets cost just to ship them back? That's insane. I thought I had it bad when I got a NOS boring head that was 40 taper not 30, but at least the return shipping was only like 15 bucks. You got hosed twice on that deal - once on the wrong threads, once on the shipping.