WEN Mini Benchtop Wood Lathe, 8-Inch by 13-Inch with Variable Speed (LA3421)

Good lathe for anybody who wants to just turn small projects. I've made a bunch of stuff on this thing so here are the pros and cons. Pro: It's cheap Con: If you try to take off too much wood at once, the lathe slows down and stops. Pro: Because it slows down whenever you try and work too fast, it sort of teaches you to take your time and not rush your projects. Con: It's not as fast as a big lathe, and catches are usually really big. At one point my tool kicked back so badly it broke my nose. Just a reminder to go slow and take your time. Pro: It's under 200 dollars so if it only lasts a year or so, it's not as big a deal as it would be if a big lathe didn't last that long. Conclusion: it's a good little machine, but it's not meant to last forever. It's expendable. It's a learning lathe, hence the low price and performance issues. All in all, if you are just starting out, this is perfect for you. But maybe if you want to professionally turn wood, maybe upgrade sooner rather than later.

This was my first lathe, I had been interested in woodturning for a while but didn't want to drop several hundred on a nicer lathe if I wasn't going to stick with the hobby. This is a good entry level machine for someone who wants to try it out but isn't sure if they want to fully commit. If you're OK being limited to small projects for a bit, this lathe is fine. But I would caution against buying a bunch of accessories for it, the MT1 taper is uncommon and you will not be able to use these accessories on other lathes if/when you upgrade. I turned some pens on this lathe and considered keeping it just for that purpose after I upgraded to a larger lathe but I got rid of it because once you start turning on a really decent lathe, this one seems like trash. In all, I turned on this lathe for like 2 months before outgrowing it - bear this in mind, if you think you're going to like the hobby, just spend that money on a real lathe. Pros - Price - Works as advertised - Good option for someone who is just wanting to see if they like woodturning Cons - MT1 is uncommon and largely not available in accessories - Size of the tool rest base is also uncommon, so you can't buy replacement tool rests - Turning mechanism on the tailstock is trash - Tightening down the tailstock doesn't do much to keep it in place - Doesn't offer lower speed RPMS - Tailstock doesn't slide off at all if you want more clearance when turning unsupported - Small swing, can't turn much larger than maybe 6" realistically - Lightweight... comparatively

Tgis is a good small lather for the price. It isn't a mini-lathe in the sense of the old Dremel moto-lathes or the newer little Chinees aluminum ones, but is bigger and more heavily made. I'd call it mid-sized. It seems well made and performs well. I can find only one downside right now, and that is the motor, which is a Chinese DC unit which has low torque at the lower rpms. With that in mind it's a good buy.

UPDATE: 20 days in with minimal use and one of the headstock bearings has started going bad, clicking when tail stock puts minimal pressure on workpiece. Removed bearings and cleaned bad one and repacked with grease so I could try using again. It is better but still going bad. Ordered a 10 pack of better grade bearings and not going to deal with Wen. Aside from low grade bearings I am still ok with purchase from the stuff I have made and how well it turned out. Nice entry level lathe. For me as a cnc machinist this lathe is super basic which I like. No G&M codes/programs, just a wonderful tactile hobby. Within 20 minutes of box hitting my front step I had wood chips flying. Unit is solid and works as expected with only one disappointment and that is the motor being more underpowered than I expected. Not a huge issue as this is a smaller inexpensive lathe. Overall I am pleased.

My wife and I gad been wanting to try wood turning for some time now, and after some research we finally bought this lathe, figuring we could upgrade later if we really get into it. After using this for a few weeks, I don’t think we will need to upgrade unless our projects get much bigger. It was fast and easy to setup and get going. Pretty much take it out of the box, attach a few parts, and go. The variable speed feature comes in the form of a dial instead of messing with belts and pulleys, which other machines in this price range tend to have. It’s fairly small which means you can turn pens, small bowls, honey dippers, and stuff like that, but you won’t be working on really long or wide projects. We also bought the Wen 4 jaw Chuck which I highly recommend to go with this lathe. We have been running this lathe for various small projects for a few weeks now with no issue. Attached is a picture of my first attempt at a bowl, which turned out well for my first time.

I started turning pens a few years ago, but using my large lathe seemed to be a waste of electricity and unnecessary wear and tear on an expensive piece of equipment! I saw the WEN LA3421 lathe was on sale for $135 during Prime Day, so I ordered one. It was shipped via USPS and arrived a little later than the "Order now to arrive by..." date, but that was Amazon's fault. Seems like that is happening more and more :-( Anyway, the package was only a little scuffed, which surprised me since the lathe weighs about 50 pounds! After opening the box I was relieved that there was zero damage to the contents. I cleaned off the oily protective coating and then applied a coat of paste wax to the bare metal bed. Other reviewers pointed out how "rough" the tool rests are, so right away I took a flat mill file to the top edges and removed the thick layer of paint. The tool shanks now glide smoothly over the rests. My wood turning club is getting ready for a show, so I rough-turned over 100 wood pen blanks on the WEN, and was impressed how quiet and smooth running it is. I don't expect to turn anything larger than pens and bottle stoppers, so I'm happy with the power and speed range. If you plan on turning larger bowls, chair legs, etc., this is NOT the lathe for you! I wouldn't even try putting a scroll chuck on it unless it was very lightweight. At $135, I have no problem relegating this to just small items. If you're not sure you want to get into woodturning, this would be an inexpensive first lathe. One caution, though, it takes #1 Morse taper tooling (Google Morse taper #1 verses #2), so if you plan to upgrade to a larger lathe in the future, you'll probably need to buy more tooling since it will take MT2. This WEN is light enough I might take it to my son's house and teach my grandchildren how to turn! And yes, I would buy it again, even at the regular price of $170 it's at now.

Don't waste your Money! I wanted to start learning how to use a lathe, saw this and thought it was a steal...didn't realize i was the one being stole from. I'm a novice so i have only used this lathe a grand total of 3.5 times. the ".5" is from the last project i was working on and halfway through the motor gave up the ghost. This is advertised to be able to turn a project up to 8" wide and 12" long, which geometrically it can, but they fail to mention that the total weight of that can only be about 1.5 lbs, anything over that weight will bog the motor down and then its over. So adding the 4-inch-4 jaw chuck will only make matters worse. This thing is really only good for very light-weight projects, probably things like pens and small pill boxes or honey dippers. Even then you have to be very gentle and shave off a tiny bit at a time, if not it will most likely burn the motor out. Another note besides the carp motor is the locking mechanisms, they will not hold very well. As you try to tighten down the piece of wood they give way making it almost impossible to get your project secured safely Take advice from someone already fooled, if you want to start turning wood, invest in something a little more durable. This definitely seems affordable, but when you consider you will end up having to buy replacement parts that will probably give out soon as well, then you will end up buying another lathe (if you haven't given up on the lathe dream by then), you end up burning through a few hundred bucks with nothing to show but a couple crappy looking first time projects. Dear WEN, please be honest when advertising this thing

This was bought for me as a gift for Christmas. It was really easy to set up though the instructions were a bit unclear I was able to figure it out. It comes together about 90% already put together. I then checked how the centers lined up and found them extremely accurate, so I was happy about that. No shimming or fiddling with it needed. I got it set up pretty late in the day so the first thing I did was just rough in a dowel rod for fun. The next morning, I got up and got a small 4" bowl blank centered in and went to work and I didn't even get the outside roughed before there was a pop and a bright flash from inside the control box and it wouldn't turn on again. I honestly thought I had blown a fuse. Long story short, I didn't. A week later waiting for more fuses and that not being the issue, I opened the control box to find that one of the circuits was split in half and the other was blown almost completely off the board. Also, the fuse was untouched. That was Sunday, and on that same day I went to Wen website and submitted a Warranty Claim through their "Contact Us" link at the bottom. It stated I would get an e-mail and to provide attachments via the e-mail I have them everything the e-mail asked for then waited. It was Sunday, they don't work on Sunday... fair. Monday came... and went. Tuesday came... and almost went, but I tried to call support and got sent to voicemail without even getting to wait in a queue. This was near 3:30pm and their site states they are available till 5pm. Left a message and waited for a call back. Wednesday came and I grew tired of waiting so I called at 8am when right when their support starts. Gave the gentleman my information and Ticket number from the e-mail on Sunday. Confirmation was made, very few questions were asked and I was told that I would be getting a replacement Control Box. This was about the only enjoyable part of the warranty process. Had to wait till Saturday for the replacement. They did not expedite it or anything. Again, fair. Though at this point I have now had a broken Lathe for 2 weeks. The new control box comes with no instructions on how to replace it. Though it was packaged well. The replacement looked exactly like the one that failed, so I could at least compare and contrast. Take pictures before dismantling etc. Getting the wires out of the old box was a huge pain and I ended up just deciding that breaking the case of the old box to get the wires out was the way to go. I then struggled a bit more getting them into the new one. Actually connecting the wires was easy though. Finally, the lathe is working again. First thing I did was plug it into a power monitor reader to measure amp draw while in use. Here are a bit of my findings for a circuit that uses a 10amp fuse This draws about 1.5 amp at the lowest speed and no load. Nothing even in the lathe. With no load and full speed it was about 2.4 Amps. I then set up a camera to record while I work on the lathe. Don't want to be messing with it with my attention elsewhere. Even while roughing out yet another bowl (cause if it was going to blow again I would rather have repeatable variables) I could not seem to get it to go above 3.5 amps. And I even stalled it a couple times by taking off to big of a bite at once several times. Which... cool the label on the machine actually says it's a 3.2amp lathe. But here's what gets me. The calculation for a fuse roughly states that the fuse should be 1.25 to 1.5 times more than the maximum amp draw. So even at the rating it says it's fore would only require a 5 amp fuse (3.2*1.5=4.8 rounded up) 6 if you wanted I guess, but even still, the machine never seems to get anywhere near being able to blow the fuse yet it sure was capable of blowing the circuits off the board the first time around which my understanding is that the fuse is supposed to blow first. Anywho... despite all this I now see that this item shows as "Discontinued" now so all of this is probably falling on deaf ears. Now that my lathe is working and the headache appears to be over for now I can at least say I am enjoying my lathe. But if it fails again, I will likely be shopping elsewhere as I do not see that Wen has any other variable speed lathes in stock... and I just can't imagine fighting with adjusting a belt or only having 1 speed. Conclusion - the Lathe machining seems spot on. The engineer/electrician that designed it skipped a few classes. The employees in Customer Support are pleasant to work with, but the software set up in order to get tickets to them is a joke. Really the only thing that saved them from a 1 star review was the fact that I at least have a working lathe now.