Maybe you don't need a lathe at all

OK lets face it - some of us only want to play with a lathe because we like the idea of making some sort of billy club to impress our friends with. And there are actually a bunch of ways to carve your own baseball bat or "fish stunner" (for when you land those 50kg tuna in your row boat) without using a lathe at all.

Travis Janeway for example apparently really likes sanding, and has a lot of patience, but his work beats any of the clubs I ever turned on my lathe.