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The lathe arrived today. Although I will not be able to play with it for some time I did remove it from the packaging and set it up on a work table just to inspect it and make sure it would run.
I must say I am very impressed with the fit and finish of this lathe. There is no paint where it shouldn't be, the bed is polished nicely and not a spot of corrosion. The handles are all chromed metal and feel very solid. The only plastic part on the lathe is the belt cover. Changing belt speeds is about as easy as it could get. With the cover open you have complete access to both the upper and lower pulleys. Its a little tight on the bottom pulley so big hands may have a little problem. I was able to change speeds in about 30 seconds.
I measured the runout with the faceplate installed. There was less than .001 of runout. In fact it ran so smoothly that I left the dial indicator touching the faceplate and turned the lathe on. Extemely smooth running.
As I am a novice at this lathe business I am not quite sure how much noise I should hear with the lathe running. It seems louder than I would have expected so I called rikontools.com tech support. They were very helpful and they think the level of noise is normal for this lathe.
As there is no runout I would think that the bearings are fine and its just normal noise. Time will tell if there is a real problem or just my ignorance of lathe noise.
The lathe is vibration free even sitting on a table and not bolted down. The manual is so, so but what manual isn't these days. All in all I am happy with my acquistion. Got the picture from woodcraft.com, not a very good one.
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One note on my out of round above, I managed to get the tolerances of the Beale chuck at the mandrel down to .0025. The face of the back plate is good and square now, making the chuck seat VERY good.
After that decision this AM I decided to make a round thing out of a square one. Used the gouge, skew and parting chisels. Went better than I expected and I think I will enjoy this turning thing.