Jack Houweling presents a pretty good example of utilising the first electric motor he could find. For a lot of people, this is going to be a plain old electric drill. His build isn't super complicated and you can probably build a functioning version without using all the tools he has at his disposal (like a drill press, bench grinder and disc grinder).
Pros: What I really like about Jack's approach is I don't feel the need to hide under my desk while watching it, afraid that a chunk of timber or fragment of improvised chisel is going to fly off and hit me in the face. One thing I think he really got right is that people who don't know much about wood-turning should maybe start with make little tool handles instead of baseball bats. The small chisel handle he produces on his third attempt actually looks pretty cool (so good I wonder if he really hasn't spent any time on a lathe before...)
Cons: Nay-sayers will point out that electric drills are meant for drilling holes not running lathes for hours at a time and you will probably burn out the motor. So maybe you try this using the beat up old drill from a yard sale.
Matthias Wandel is in a different league altogether. I have never really felt comfortable around people who are amazingly good both at CAD and with using a table saw in their well appointed workshops. I think this is probably in many ways better than the lathes I bought and as such I hate everything about it.
Pros: This thing is amazing.
Cons: If you had all these tools and half these skills, you could make enough stuff to easily pay for a commercial lathe (and I don't mean a cheap pen-lathe, I mean a commercial one).
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