Why do you start lathe work with large pieces of metal/wood?

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For example, just saw a video of a lathe machining a chess piece. The final product was much smaller than the starting piece. Why do you start with such large pieces of stock for small projects? Wouldn’t it be smarter and more efficient to rough cut using cnc or water jet then finish?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

A CNC what? Lathes can be and often are CNC. A CNC mill? A mill works similarly enough to a lathe that if you’re doing a round part it will be no faster, but the setup time for moving it between machines certainly slows you down.

Water jets are very expensive to run. Also, making round cuts with a water jet may not be any faster than lathe work. Why use a big expensive tool when the classic one works just as well?

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