Any Rikon Experience?

Have a small shop and have been using a 10" Jet lathe with a bed extension for several years. Was poised to buy the 15" Laguna for about $2500 but just saw an ad for the Rikon 1420 benchtop for less tan half of the Laguna. Both are 1.5HP. Rikon can turn 18" outboard with a bed extension. Could only find one youtube review of the Rikon but looks good and very reasonable price. I mostly turn bowls these days and actually only ever did one project which required the bed extension for turned legs. Appreciate any experience anyone has had with either. Cheers

If you mostly turn bowls, go for the Laguna. The Rikon looks like a DC motor and the controls for those don't like the heat generated from heavy bowl turning. A few years ago you could almost fry an egg on Jet DC motors. People posted all the time on the motor smelling and too hot to touch. No idea about the latest iterations.

I snagged one of the Powermatic PM2014 models a few weeks back when they were on sale for nearly $1k off. Put it in the same price bracket as the Rikon is but it had some nice features like AC VFD motor, 1-1/4x8 spindle thread, etc. I added the light and bed extension and so far it has turned out to be a nice mid-sized lathe. It can go to 20” with the extension in the lower position but honestly how big can you really go on a midi lathe. A 12” bowl out of round is enough to make this one dance and I have it bolted to a heavy weighted counter. I really couldn’t imagine turning much bigger safely on these small lathes.

Anyway, check out the Powermatic too for comparison.

Laguna is notorious for lousy customer service. Not sure about the modern DC motors, but the old ones you had to fiddle with them a lot to keep them performing well. I do not like the slow start up/ramp up to speed on the Rikon mini lathe I have. A bench top lathe can work, and maybe half or more of that is having a bench that it will sit on, flat and level, and anchored to wall and/or ground. Does the lathe you are looking at have 110 or 220 volt. I prefer the 220. I had turned on both models of the Jet 16 lathe, 110 and 220. For bowl turning, the 220 one worked a lot better. That PM lathe looks good too, and PM does make a very good lathe.

robo hippy

Thanks Greg and Richard for your comments. Must admit motors are a mystery to me but both the Rikon and Laguna appear to have DC motors; the Rikon is 1.5HP TEFC DC motor and the Laguna is Permanent Magnet DC. Frankly I don't understand the difference. Both have 1-1/4x8 spindle thread. Laguna is $2300; Rikon on sale at Woodcraft for $1105. Both without shipping and accessories.

Here are a few pics of the little Powermatic. It truly is a shrunken down version of the larger siblings. The only down side is that I already want a larger lathe. LOL. My prior shop had a Laguna 1836, But this time around, I’m going to hold out on larger until I can afford a Robust or a Vicmarc.

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I have a Rikon 70-220 lathe and have never had a problem with it. It's a good lathe and does what it's supposed to do. I also have a Laguna Revo 1836 220v. The Laguna is a great lathe and I have also had no problems with it.