When you have to choose the best possible lathe on the market, you will be faced with so many options that you will quickly pull out all your hair. This is why just knowing that the Precision Matthews and the Grizzly are two of the best lathes on the market already helps.
The Precision Matthews is the perfect lathe if you are in the United States, with immediate help and replacement parts. However, Grizzly is a much larger company capable of providing support and replacement machines in almost any country without a third party.
Knowing how well the lathes will be supported will not immediately tell you which one is the best, especially if you are in the US. This is why we need to look at all the more minor details about the machines and the availability of the most common types that you may buy.
What Is A Precision Matthews Lathe?
Precision Matthews is a company with its head office located in the United States that manufactures all its machines in Taiwan. The company is relatively small compared to other lathe and mill manufacturers, which allows each machine design to be thoroughly tested.
Precision Matthews provides two lathes to the international market, with manual and semi-CNC machines being favored. Several different models have become popular among hobbyists, with many preferring to have a machine with automatic feeds but manual in every other way.
This has meant that Precision Matthews only provides machines that are considered manual by industry standards. Each lathe is purpose-built for metal machining, requiring some conversion to be done to each machine when working on wood or softer materials.
What Is A Grizzly Lathe?
Grizzly is a machine manufacturer founded in 1983 and has been active in the industry ever since, growing in size significantly as it began making more diverse machines. With many of the machines being manufactured in Taiwan, the company also uses several other manufacturing facilities worldwide.
The company provides several different types of lathes to the market, including lathes focused on metalworking and woodworking. CNC lathes or fully manual lathes are all part of the company’s catalog of machines that will help you create anything you can imagine.
With the company’s large size, it should be noted that it still offers several warranties and maintenance schedules that other manufacturers do not. Promising to help you fix almost any machine that the company has made since it was first founded in the 80s.
Where Are Precision Matthews Lathes Used?
Because Precision Matthews has only ever provided a small number of lathes that work on metal, the most common areas they are used are with hobbyist gunsmiths. Many of the older tools are repurposed to work with wood, as the machines are small and lightweight.
The machines are loved for their accuracy, allowing gunsmiths or artisans to create exact cuts needed when working with guns. However, in the woodworking world, these lathes are loved because of their lower price points and the portability of the machines.
This means that the Precision Matthews lathes are capable of helping you turn the perfect table legs and then later help you cut the ideal brass fitting for that same leg. Many wood lathes cannot do this because of the different types of cuts needed; metalworking lathes are easier to turn into wood lathes.
Where Are Grizzly Lathes Used?
Because of the company’s size, Grizzly lathes are used in almost every industry that needs a lathe. The company provides CNC lathes and woodworking lathes, which has meant that it has permeated into everything, which helped make spare parts for the machines much more accessible.
You can often find Grizzly lathes used by enthusiasts, artisans, and professionals in any industry. With the lathes often used because they are more affordable alternatives to some of the larger options on the market, Grizzly specifically offers alternatives to larger competitors.
It should be noted that Grizzly machines, while much more capable than many others, can be harder to find replacement parts due to saturation. This means that there are so many machines from the company that knowing what part will work with your machine is not always the easiest.
What Are The Features Of The Typical Precision Matthews Lathe?
Now that we know some of the basics of the companies that provide the lathes, we can look at the options that both are providing. Especially considering that you may be buying older machines that have already been used in the past and are not brand new out of the box.
You will need to consider several things when leaning towards one or the other company, with many people not always realizing the possible limitations. Precision Matthews has several great options on the market, but their competitors often outclass them.
Size
This is the first and most present limitation of the Precision Matthews line of tools, with the largest currently available machines only being able to cut lengths of 19-inches. This means that nothing you are cutting on any lathes can be longer than this, which is often the case when working on wood.
Some older lathes or modified lathes may cut much longer pieces; however, this will heavily impact the accuracy of your cuts. Older lathes will need to be thoroughly serviced to have the same accuracy as a new machine when it is newly delivered.
Precision
Because Hobbyists or gunsmiths usually use precision Matthews lathes, the lathes are extremely precise for manual lathes. Allowing you to easily cut with absolute millimeter precision without having to sacrifice somewhere else in your cuts.
This is often why Gunsmiths use precision Matthews; however, this also affects the market prices of the machines. The machine does not sell that well once owned simply because a new owner may not know how well a machine has been treated, with many losing accuracy if handled improperly.
Speed
Precision Matthews can reach higher speeds on many larger lathes, easily allowing you to cut wood without using a different lathe. However, when using smaller lathes, you will be limited by the machine not going fast enough to cut into the wood with the ease you may expect.
This is generally why you will find that metal lathes living in the workshop of a wood artisan are much larger machines than normal. The machine needs to be able to spin much faster than usual, allowing artisans to cut into the wood without relying on a different machine.
Control
The control systems of Precision Matthews vary greatly, with many of the standard machines being completely manual, with only automatic feeding. However, as you move up the range of available machines, the automatic features significantly increase, with auto feeding, auto depth, and a few other features added.
This means that the machine can cut a piece almost entirely on its own without requiring someone to reset it or decide how deep to cut. With the machine calculating on its own how fast to turn and how fast the feed has to be when cutting specific materials.
Serviceability
The Precision Matthews tools are usually quite serviceable if you are within the US, where the manufacturer’s headquarters is. If, however, you live outside the US, you will have to buy the machine through third-party suppliers, affecting how easy it may be to service it.
Usually, if you are working through a third-party supplier, you will have to order parts through them, and many times, they may not support older machines. This is often why Precision Matthews lathes are only used in certain countries, where the manufacturer has decided to supply directly.
What Are The Features Of A Grizzly Lathe?
Grizzly is a much larger company than Precision Matthews and has a much wider variety of options and precisions when it comes to lathes. With many of the machines provided by the company being used in industries, they were never meant to be used.
To try and condense everything, we will be focusing on the manual lathes only, as the CNC machines provided are usually much larger and more precise than anything manual. To understand what the company can provide, this simple fact needs to be understood.
Size
Grizzly provides a metal lathe at the top end to help bore out pipes and much larger pieces, which means it has a distance between centers of 212-inches. This means that the machine is much larger than most others on the market, easily larger than most workshops.
However, the company also provides mini-lathes that can easily fit on the desk in most offices and be used to make small precise cuts within minutes. Further, the wood lathes from the company also vary, with some of the larger having 42-inches between centers, allowing you to choose any size you may need.
Precision
Grizzly has machines that are almost literally as accurate as you may need them, with fully manual machines that can only be adjusted by millimeters when cutting. However, some machines are almost entirely computer-controlled, allowing you to create pieces without resetting everything.
However, towards the smaller end of the spectrum, Grizzly lathes may not be as accurate, as there is an inherent loss of accuracy when making tools too small. This means that overall Grizzly tools can help you make precise cuts, but only if you use lathes that are the right size.
Speed
It should go without saying that thanks to the variety of options that Grizzly has, there are lathes that travel at almost any speed you can imagine. Which creates a market that allows you to easily and comfortably create anything that your mind can imagine.
We always recommend that you get a good metalworking piece to help you create authentic pieces without having to sacrifice versatility. However, wood lathes from Grizzly can be adjusted to also cut into metal if everything has been set up properly.
Control
The control systems on Grizzly manual lathes are all perfectly capable of allowing you to make millimeter-perfect cuts. Many larger machines allow for finer control as you may need to cut within impossibly small margins when working on larger pieces.
Further, larger machines allow you to control the speed to pinpoint accuracy without sacrificing power. However, if needed, you can buy CNC lathes from Grizzly, enabling you to make precision cuts that are only capable with computer-controlled machines.
Serviceability
Possibly the most important part about Grizzly tools is that the size of the company has allowed it to spread to most countries where it has a market in. This means that you can easily find replacements parts and replacement machines when something does eventually go wrong.
Further, the costs are much lower because Grizzly does not rely as heavily on third-party distribution when a new machine is broken, or an old machine needs replacements parts. The company usually can send someone to help repair the machine or help find solutions to broken parts.
Which Lathe Is Best, A Precision Matthews Or A Grizzly Lathe?
If you had to choose between two lathes almost the same, just with different names on them, we would recommend getting a Grizzly. While some of the parts on the machine will be mass-manufactured, the overall support from the company is significantly better.
When choosing a new machine to add to your workshop or garage, you may even be able to easily find something that fits your needs exactly. With many Precision Matthews instances, you may have to compromise on size, speeds, or useability, which leads to overall unhappiness.
However, if you are working on specific parts that are both small and can be worked on by Precision Matthews, the tools may be better for you. Sometimes the best tool for you is the one you can actually get right now instead of the one you imagine to be best.
Conclusion
Both Precision Matthews and Grizzly lathes have several benefits that make them more unique than most other lathe manufacturers on the market. If you have the chance to buy an old tool or you can get a brand new one delivered, we recommend working on one before you purchase it.
Whatever you do, don’t purchase the lathe that has been stripped down into 20 different pieces!!
References
Precision Matthews PM 10X22V vs. Grizzly G0752 10X22 (cnczone.com)
Any Gunsmiths That Can Weigh In On Pm Vs. Grizzly? | The Hobby-Machinist
Grizzly vs. Precision Mathews – The Home Shop Machinist & Machinist’s Workshop Magazine’s BBS
Precision Mathews or Grizzly lathe | Shooters’ Forum (accurateshooter.com)
Which new lathe? | Page 2 | Long Range Hunting Forum