Bob Cleek

I share your sentiments, but, technically, they aren't exact copies and I doubt anybody's got a patent on something as basic as a table saw. ZHL, on the other hand, copies intellectual property verbatim. Still, the old maxim applies, "If the price seems too good to be true, it probably isn't." Those Asian knockoffs cost less because they are of lower quality and you get what you pay for. 

Bob:
I agree 100% with Joe's advice.
 
There is another alternative.  Plastic modelers have used the household floor finish FUTURE for a gloss coat finish - over all sorts of paints.  They have changed the name several times but Future or Pledge was always someplace on the label.  I had to buy a new bottle and the bottle now says Pledge - Floor Gloss.  The thing I like about the newest product is that it isn't a true gloss coat with only one airbrushed coat.  Semi-gloss with the first coat going to true gloss with additional coats.  Makes it more suitable for my purposes.
 
Applying any clear coat you have to watch how much is applied - I have found that a bit of practice off the model will give you the experience you need to judge how much is enough and how much is too much.
 
 

Bob,
 
In scale, semi-gloss would be more appropriate.
 
I've used my airbrush for many years to finish plastic models, and wooden ships as well. Since you are already using Vallejo, I can recommend their varnishes. Just thin them with water to get them to spray properly. In this case I would use the Satin, but you may want to try a blend of some combination of matte/satin/gloss to get the exact gloss level you want. 
 
Keep the pressure low (15 or so PSI) and apply in smooth wet coats. If you get too high with pressure or too far from the model you can end up with a rough finish due to the varnish drying in the air on the way to the model. 
 
Practice on some scrap until you are comfortable. 
 
 
 

Let’s not buy these. No different than buying ZHL models, it’s IP theft. Jim Byrnes shouldn’t lose money to Chinese knockoffs 

If space limitations apply, the lighter weight lathe is an decided advantage. However, weight equates with accuracy when it comes to machine tools. That's just a fact of life.

Or cut a groove with whatever you've got and split the log with wedges and a maul. Not always possible, depending upon the log and the species, but that's the way they did it in the old days. Still works today.

Or cut a groove with whatever you've got and split the log with wedges and a maul. Not always possible, depending upon the log and the species, but that's the way they did it in the old days. Still works today.

Ditto to everything that's been posted above.
 
There are many discussions here on these topics. I'll just mention a few observations as the owner of three lathes of various sizes and types. (A well-equipped Unimat SL, a fully tooled Atlas/Craftsman 12x48, and a Craftsman full size wood-turning lathe.)
 
1.  The price of a basic lathe or mill is, at best, only about half of what one would reasonably end up spending to equip the basic tool with the tooling necessary to perform the work usually done on them. 
 
2.  A good quality used lathe or mill, assuming it is in good condition, which often requires knowledgeable examination and testing, is always a better buy than a new one. This is especially so if one is able to purchase a lathe or mill in good shape with a considerable amount of tooling included in the deal. The "package" deals on new lathes and mills aren't anything special, generally. The "extras" are simply very basic tooling that would permit one to do one or two very basic operations. You may save a few bucks on the "package" over the retail prices, but you'll be spending far more than you save on the new machine than you would buying a good used one. They are like cars that way. Once you drive them off the lot, their value depreciates immediately.
 
1. The Unimat SL and Unimat 3 are excellent precision machines. They can be set up as either a lathe or a mill. The SL has been recognized by many as the finest modelmakers" lathe ever built. That said, they haven't been made since the seventies and you will certainly pay more for a Unimat than for anything close to one new. (The new "Unimats" are not the same. Somebody just bought the name to capitalize on it and brought out very poor products under the Unimat label.) Parts and attachments for the Unimats are no longer available except on the secondary market, such as eBay, and are extremely expensive. Don't even think about buying a basic machine and trying to fully equip it buying tooling on eBay and not paying a lot more than the equivalent for another machine. The old Unimats are great, but something of a collectors' cult item these days. The one advantage of that is that their value increases over time. I was lucky enough to be given mine. I spent another $750 or so just getting the basic tooling I wanted without any of the attachments for it, like the threading attachment, the jigsaw attachment, the table saw attachment, the rotary table, and so on, just to give you an idea of what it all costs. If it weren't a matter of "dancing with the girl ya brought," I'd have bought a used mini-lathe with better parts availability.
 
2. Sherline makes good, solid machines. To my way of thinking, however, they aren't cheap and they are limited by their size and power. For the same money, or much less on the used market, one can acquire a larger, more powerful and more versatile lathe such as the Chinese-made "7X's" or similar. (The prudent buyer obtains these for a bit more cost at reliable retailers like Grizzly Industrial or LittleMachineShop. Theirs have better quality control. Buy one at a bargain rate retailer and you can expect casting sand in the gearbox, etc., etc., etc. Precision costs money. Buying "seconds" is a false economy.)
 
3. Because so much of the price of any lathe or mill is dependent upon the tooling you will eventually be buying, and because much of it may be proprietary, careful consideration needs be given to the brand that one is purchasing and how available less expensive generic tooling might be. Similarly, one needs to decide between metric and Imperial standards. The advantage of the Chinese 7X's for modeling, or anything else for that matter, is that there's millions of them so there's tons of tooling available in standard thread patterns. That often makes a huge difference in cost in the long run. On the other hand, a proprietary part for an "oddball" lathe or mill can sometimes cost so much repairs become pointless.
 
4. A lathe with a milling attachment can do milling operations. A mill cannot do lathe operations.  
 
5. Within broad limits, of course, every size lathe can do smaller work, but none can do work larger than the physical limits of the diameter and length of work pieces. (For example, the Chinese mini-lathes will spin a 7" diameter work piece which is as long as its bed. A "7X14" allows you work anything within a 7" by 14" size envelope.) You won't go wrong with a larger lathe, but many find they need to later buy a larger lathe, or wished they had. 
 
6.  Not only is a lathe the most versatile machine tool of all, but it is also the most dangerous. Rotary saws may injure a greater number of people, but only because there are so many more of them. A lathe is not a machine to be operated intuitively. It demands at least a basic understanding of its operation and a thorough grounding in safety protocols. Get somebody who knows what they are doing to instruct you or take a class at the local adult education junior college or something. Even a relatively small lathe can kill you.  A mini-lathe might not kill you, but it can still maim you pretty good. Never forget that.  https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/nyregion/yale-student-dies-in-machine-shop-accident.html
 
7.  If I were buying a mini-lathe today, I'd be looking at something like these:
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-4-x-6-Micro-Metal-Lathe/G0745
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-7-x-14-Variable-Speed-Benchtop-Lathe/G0765
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-8-x-16-Variable-Speed-Benchtop-Lathe/G0768
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-9-x-19-Bench-Lathe/G4000
 
 
 
 

That must have been a frustrating problem! So close and yet so far.
 
While greatly hesitant to say anything critical, I feel compelled to ask why the "bug" in the bow scrollwork appears to have eight legs, making it a spider or a scorpion, even though the vessel was named "Wasp?" 
 

 
Thanks for sharing what is a most interesting build!
 
 
 
 

I think there may be a sound reason for the majority's practice in this case. Bronze will develop an even brownish or verdigris green patina over time in the marine environment, depending upon the particular alloy. Brass, on the other hand, is less predictable when left to its own devices. In the marine environment, it develops a green patina rapidly and often unevenly. As a general rule, brass, where used at all (e.g. bells, clock cases, lamps) is always kept polished on vessels, while bronze is not. On professionally maintained fancy yachts, however, it is customary to keep large bronze fittings polished bright, as is evident in the photos of this model's prototype. That's a huge amount of work. As you probably know, to reduce the amount of polishing maintenance, some of these "high maintenance" yachts had their yellow metal gold electroplated, hence the term describing them as "gold platers."
 
Since brass oxidizes unpredictably... even the touch of a finger can result in an ugly unevenness in the patina of a polished part ... the spectacular professionally-built "boardroom models" also often had all their brass parts gold plated. In that instance, as the models were of steamships, their unpainted gold plated fittings weren't an accurate depiction of the prototype, but, rather, something of a understandable stylistic affectation demonstrating the quality of the materials and the skills of the builders. 
 
Painting brass with lacquer is frequently done by manufacturers to prevent its oxidation, but the practice is a cure worse than the disease in the marine environment. While good lacquer finishes work fairly well in the dry confines of a building on land, in the marine environment it is very common for lacquered brass to develop black spotting beneath the lacquer and removing good, well-aged lacquer requires the mechanical abrasion of the lacquer on the entire piece down to bare brass so that it may be thereafter properly maintained by regular light polishing.
 
I'd like to think that a surgically clean polished brass piece in a proper case maintained within reasonable humidity levels would oxidize gracefully and that the resulting patina would be pleasing to the eye, but I'm not sure that bet can be considered a sure one in the long haul. Far be it from me to second-guess what is one of the most impressive demonstrations of modeling metal work I've ever seen, but considering the practice of polishing the yellow metal on the prototype, and the relative ease and low cost of thin gold electroplating and the wide range of finishes to any level of shine and color shade available, it seems to me that your masterful fabrications are eminently entitled to that treatment.

George, Thank you for there compliment. The metal I use is brass - an alloy of copper and zinc, bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Brass does tarnish over time (even indoors) losing its sheen and becoming quite dull, this takes several years. If you want it to  remain bright you can paint it with lacquer. I quite like to see the brass age so I don't bother but I am in the minority in this respect. 
 
Roger - thank you.

Vents:-
 
I started off by making all the stems - the ones in the next photo just happen to be the 4 largest ones.

The next sequence of photos covers the manufacture of the cowl. Starting with the drilling and milling of the holes to take the stem. The end stop is set on the milling vice so that all holes for a specific size of cowl are subsequently drilled the same distance from the end of the bar.

In the next photo the stem inserted to test the fit.

The stem is removed and the outer profile of the cowl is machined using the profile tool. The tool is advanced very slowly to minimise cutting forces. The tool position is set such the the radius of the profile is at the left hand edge of the hole drilled in the bar.

The bar is then removed form the lathe and the stem is reinserted.

A small piece of solder is placed in the bore of the stem and the assembly is heated to melt the solder.
This produces a neat solder joint with no excess solder to clean from the outside of the cowl.

Then its back to the lathe to bore out the cowl mouth. I found that drilling a small pilot hole eased the passage of the ball ended end mill.


The small spigot holding the cowl to the bar is then cut off and then finished with a file and emery cloth before polishing.
I started with the middle sized cowls. The first one took about an hour. In the next photo you can see the completed cowl with 9 other stems. I had miscounted when making stems and had to go back later and make 2 more.

I took a celebratory photo when I got to 4. By this stage manufacture time was about half and hour.

By the end of day 1 I had the 12 middle sized ones complete.

I then made the 2 smaller ones - not very big at all.

I then moved on to the 4 larger cowls.

By the end of day 2 I had 18 all made.

Unimats came with 110 VAC and 220 VAC motors. They were metric machines. They haven't been made since the late Seventies.
 
Very true. A common machine tool with lots of units in production over a long period of time which will accept lots of generic after-market tooling is a huge savings. Less common, more specialized machine tools with lots of proprietary tooling get expensive very quickly.  Precision machine tools and tooling have always been expensive, but prices have really gone up for quality stuff in recent times.

Unimats came with 110 VAC and 220 VAC motors. They were metric machines. They haven't been made since the late Seventies.
 
Very true. A common machine tool with lots of units in production over a long period of time which will accept lots of generic after-market tooling is a huge savings. Less common, more specialized machine tools with lots of proprietary tooling get expensive very quickly.  Precision machine tools and tooling have always been expensive, but prices have really gone up for quality stuff in recent times.

Unimats came with 110 VAC and 220 VAC motors. They were metric machines. They haven't been made since the late Seventies.
 
Very true. A common machine tool with lots of units in production over a long period of time which will accept lots of generic after-market tooling is a huge savings. Less common, more specialized machine tools with lots of proprietary tooling get expensive very quickly.  Precision machine tools and tooling have always been expensive, but prices have really gone up for quality stuff in recent times.

Another option, which I *hardly* regret making- the once very inexpensive and now not so much anymore, Chinese mini mill and lathe. As offered by Micromark, Little Machine Shop, Harbor Freight and others. I'm happier with the MASS of these cast iron machines, as sometime I need to machine something a bit bigger. And yes I've added many tools over the years... some 20 years I've had these things.
 
.

You've gotten some really great advice on here.  A couple of other things I would add that just came to mind:
 
1.  The one thing I liked about the Sherline is that their mills are very nice and the great thing is that the accessories are generally interchangeable between the lathe and mill (which leads to some cost savings).  If you think you might be in the market for a mill, it might make sense to get the same manufacturer so that you can share accessories.  For example, if you want a digital readout box, you can share the same box between the mill and the lathe which will save you some money.
 
2.  I think someone may have mentioned this, but think about whether you want to work in metric or imperial.  At least with Sherline, you can't share a DRO box between two different standards.  I made the mistake years ago of buying a used imperial mill and metric lathe off eBay.  When I went to buy a DRO package a year later, I had to convert at least one of them to the other standard which would require an expensive threadscrew and wheel upgrade that was like half the cost of a new machine.  Since I wanted to switch to metric, I just went ahead and sold the mill and bought a new one (slightly bigger, with wider table, taller column, and hi-speed wheels) and added the DRO package.  Then I got into pen turning, and realized the 8" lathe wasn't going to allow me to turn longer pieces because the chucks were taking up too much room.  So, I sold that one and upgraded to the longer bed lathe.  Later on I decided to start turning larger diameter wood projects, but was limited by the height of the lathe so ended up getting the riser block set.  
 
I say all this so you can learn from my mistakes   Also to show you that the Sherline are very versatile with all the accessories.  It might be hard to forecast exactly what you will need for the next decade plus when deciding on packages as your interests may change (mine certainly have), but buying a package of accessories will certainly save you money.  If I remember correctly, the "A" package pretty much should be considered at a minimum as it includes a chuck which is fairly expensive if you buy separately.
 
3.  Glad Roger mentioned the lathe with milling column option.  Depending on how often you will be using a mill or lathe, that might be a very good option to go with.  I've barely used my mill thus far, but have used the lathe a lot on turning projects (non-ship model projects).  If I had to start all over again, I'd strongly consider that option to save on cost and bench space.  Start with the lathe, and then if you want to get into milling operations, consider whether you can live with the milling column attachment (which from what I've read is a pretty quick adjustment to the lathe) -- or if switching between milling and lathe work will be a pain, get a stand-alone mill.  My problem was I started with the mill, then upgraded the mill for the DRO.  
 
4.  Safety is definitely a must for the lathe.  Not only eye protection, but be very careful of clothes, hair, etc. getting caught.  My first lathe was the Proxxon DB250 mini lathe.  I was turning a mast for my first ship, and finishing it with steel wool.  Well, I got the steel wool too close to the spinning headstock and it pulled the wool into it.  Thankfully, I immediately let go but it taught me a good lesson.  My hair is short, but I always wear short sleeves and avoid using cloth or anything similar around the lathe.  When I cover the lathe bed, I use paper towels instead.  I also make sure that my family knows not to disturb me when I have my power tools running as a small lapse in concentration can be disastrous.
 
Also, make sure that chucks are installed tightly.  For some reason I had a chuck come off the spindle spinning at 2000+ RPM.  Thankfully it didn't fly off, but just sort of spun off the headstock and dropped onto the bench.  When it hit the floor, it was still spinning like a top.  Was a good learning experience for me to continually check that things like jaw chucks - which are screwed onto the head or tail stock and are not secured by a drawbolt - remain tightly screwed on during the turning process.
 
Learning by watching videos online is fine, but I have to say, you see people on YouTube doing really stupid, unsafe things.  Whenever I watch those videos, I already try to read the comments as people will point out if the person was doing something not in a safe manner.  

Don't forget the Taig/Peatol lathes. They're excellent for model makers, cheaper than the Sherline, have a huge range of accessories, lots of instructional videos on the web, and a very nice idea for a tailstock. They are also available quite often on eBay. I bought mine in the UK with a huge range of accessories some years ago for £400 which at the time would have been a little over US$550. I have the tool rest for wood turning, so although I have the perfectly good Proxxon wood lathe, I now only use that for the longer pieces such as masts.
 
Tony

Thanks for the tip, Rob! We've had unusually high temperatures here in Northern CA the last couple of days, breaking 100F in some places. I'm close to the coast with sea breezes keeping things cool most of the time, so I just need something for the summer heat spells. I saw someplace that they are now making them with a hose that can be run out a window to deal with the "exhaust" and condensate. I'll be looking for that feature for sure!

Have you considered the new freestanding portable air conditioners? I haven't played with one, but I'm seriously considering it. If anybody has any experience with them, please chime in. I like the portability, the absence of installation work, and no hard wiring required.
 
https://www.google.com/search?q=freestanding+portable+air+conditioner&oq=freestanding+portable+air+conditioner&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.7120j1j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Yeah, but was organic, water-based,  and environmentally friendly! Not that nasty old-fashioned stuff made out of tree sap, vegetable oil, and chalk. Doesn't that give you a warm satisfied feeling that you're saving the earth?  

Ditto to everything that's been posted above.
 
There are many discussions here on these topics. I'll just mention a few observations as the owner of three lathes of various sizes and types. (A well-equipped Unimat SL, a fully tooled Atlas/Craftsman 12x48, and a Craftsman full size wood-turning lathe.)
 
1.  The price of a basic lathe or mill is, at best, only about half of what one would reasonably end up spending to equip the basic tool with the tooling necessary to perform the work usually done on them. 
 
2.  A good quality used lathe or mill, assuming it is in good condition, which often requires knowledgeable examination and testing, is always a better buy than a new one. This is especially so if one is able to purchase a lathe or mill in good shape with a considerable amount of tooling included in the deal. The "package" deals on new lathes and mills aren't anything special, generally. The "extras" are simply very basic tooling that would permit one to do one or two very basic operations. You may save a few bucks on the "package" over the retail prices, but you'll be spending far more than you save on the new machine than you would buying a good used one. They are like cars that way. Once you drive them off the lot, their value depreciates immediately.
 
1. The Unimat SL and Unimat 3 are excellent precision machines. They can be set up as either a lathe or a mill. The SL has been recognized by many as the finest modelmakers" lathe ever built. That said, they haven't been made since the seventies and you will certainly pay more for a Unimat than for anything close to one new. (The new "Unimats" are not the same. Somebody just bought the name to capitalize on it and brought out very poor products under the Unimat label.) Parts and attachments for the Unimats are no longer available except on the secondary market, such as eBay, and are extremely expensive. Don't even think about buying a basic machine and trying to fully equip it buying tooling on eBay and not paying a lot more than the equivalent for another machine. The old Unimats are great, but something of a collectors' cult item these days. The one advantage of that is that their value increases over time. I was lucky enough to be given mine. I spent another $750 or so just getting the basic tooling I wanted without any of the attachments for it, like the threading attachment, the jigsaw attachment, the table saw attachment, the rotary table, and so on, just to give you an idea of what it all costs. If it weren't a matter of "dancing with the girl ya brought," I'd have bought a used mini-lathe with better parts availability.
 
2. Sherline makes good, solid machines. To my way of thinking, however, they aren't cheap and they are limited by their size and power. For the same money, or much less on the used market, one can acquire a larger, more powerful and more versatile lathe such as the Chinese-made "7X's" or similar. (The prudent buyer obtains these for a bit more cost at reliable retailers like Grizzly Industrial or LittleMachineShop. Theirs have better quality control. Buy one at a bargain rate retailer and you can expect casting sand in the gearbox, etc., etc., etc. Precision costs money. Buying "seconds" is a false economy.)
 
3. Because so much of the price of any lathe or mill is dependent upon the tooling you will eventually be buying, and because much of it may be proprietary, careful consideration needs be given to the brand that one is purchasing and how available less expensive generic tooling might be. Similarly, one needs to decide between metric and Imperial standards. The advantage of the Chinese 7X's for modeling, or anything else for that matter, is that there's millions of them so there's tons of tooling available in standard thread patterns. That often makes a huge difference in cost in the long run. On the other hand, a proprietary part for an "oddball" lathe or mill can sometimes cost so much repairs become pointless.
 
4. A lathe with a milling attachment can do milling operations. A mill cannot do lathe operations.  
 
5. Within broad limits, of course, every size lathe can do smaller work, but none can do work larger than the physical limits of the diameter and length of work pieces. (For example, the Chinese mini-lathes will spin a 7" diameter work piece which is as long as its bed. A "7X14" allows you work anything within a 7" by 14" size envelope.) You won't go wrong with a larger lathe, but many find they need to later buy a larger lathe, or wished they had. 
 
6.  Not only is a lathe the most versatile machine tool of all, but it is also the most dangerous. Rotary saws may injure a greater number of people, but only because there are so many more of them. A lathe is not a machine to be operated intuitively. It demands at least a basic understanding of its operation and a thorough grounding in safety protocols. Get somebody who knows what they are doing to instruct you or take a class at the local adult education junior college or something. Even a relatively small lathe can kill you.  A mini-lathe might not kill you, but it can still maim you pretty good. Never forget that.  https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/nyregion/yale-student-dies-in-machine-shop-accident.html
 
7.  If I were buying a mini-lathe today, I'd be looking at something like these:
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-4-x-6-Micro-Metal-Lathe/G0745
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-7-x-14-Variable-Speed-Benchtop-Lathe/G0765
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-8-x-16-Variable-Speed-Benchtop-Lathe/G0768
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-9-x-19-Bench-Lathe/G4000
 
 
 
 

I have a Sherline Lathe with 17in bed and optional milling column.  I also have the riser block and toolpost that I bought for a special project ( turning the turret of a 1:96 scale Passaic Class Monitor from a large bronze bearing sleeve). I also used the milling column to machine the oval gun ports.  I agree with the posts above that it is an excellent tool backed by a high class company.  
 
It it does have one feature that I do not like. Unlike a conventional metal lathe where the tail stock can be set off center to turn a taper, the Sherline does this by rotating the headstock.  There is also a bass ackwards optional cross slide that can be used for this but as of yet, I have not wanted to spring for the $250 plus or minus to buy one.  This unfortunately prevents use of any sort of tailstock support when turning a taper, but more seriously prevents use of the key in the joint between the headstock and base with predictable results if one is not extremely careful.
 
Since I suspect that many modelers who invest in a metal lathe dream of turning a cannon barrel this should be considered.
 
Roger

If you need some help to understand "how to" and "what you need" for a lathe or a mill, I recommend these two sites.
 
http://www.mini-lathe.com/Default.htm  has a lot of good general info on hobby type machine tools.
 
and for this next one, there's two URLs.  One for the Learning Center: https://littlemachineshop.com/info/menu_page.php?parent=itm11  and one for the info center:  https://littlemachineshop.com/info/menu_page.php?parent=itm12.   
 
Disclaimer:
I have no financial interest in either site but I have learned a lot from them. And when I went "up scale" from my MicroMark mill, I bought the Little Machine Shop one. I'm just run of the mill user, so to speak.

Ditto to everything that's been posted above.
 
There are many discussions here on these topics. I'll just mention a few observations as the owner of three lathes of various sizes and types. (A well-equipped Unimat SL, a fully tooled Atlas/Craftsman 12x48, and a Craftsman full size wood-turning lathe.)
 
1.  The price of a basic lathe or mill is, at best, only about half of what one would reasonably end up spending to equip the basic tool with the tooling necessary to perform the work usually done on them. 
 
2.  A good quality used lathe or mill, assuming it is in good condition, which often requires knowledgeable examination and testing, is always a better buy than a new one. This is especially so if one is able to purchase a lathe or mill in good shape with a considerable amount of tooling included in the deal. The "package" deals on new lathes and mills aren't anything special, generally. The "extras" are simply very basic tooling that would permit one to do one or two very basic operations. You may save a few bucks on the "package" over the retail prices, but you'll be spending far more than you save on the new machine than you would buying a good used one. They are like cars that way. Once you drive them off the lot, their value depreciates immediately.
 
1. The Unimat SL and Unimat 3 are excellent precision machines. They can be set up as either a lathe or a mill. The SL has been recognized by many as the finest modelmakers" lathe ever built. That said, they haven't been made since the seventies and you will certainly pay more for a Unimat than for anything close to one new. (The new "Unimats" are not the same. Somebody just bought the name to capitalize on it and brought out very poor products under the Unimat label.) Parts and attachments for the Unimats are no longer available except on the secondary market, such as eBay, and are extremely expensive. Don't even think about buying a basic machine and trying to fully equip it buying tooling on eBay and not paying a lot more than the equivalent for another machine. The old Unimats are great, but something of a collectors' cult item these days. The one advantage of that is that their value increases over time. I was lucky enough to be given mine. I spent another $750 or so just getting the basic tooling I wanted without any of the attachments for it, like the threading attachment, the jigsaw attachment, the table saw attachment, the rotary table, and so on, just to give you an idea of what it all costs. If it weren't a matter of "dancing with the girl ya brought," I'd have bought a used mini-lathe with better parts availability.
 
2. Sherline makes good, solid machines. To my way of thinking, however, they aren't cheap and they are limited by their size and power. For the same money, or much less on the used market, one can acquire a larger, more powerful and more versatile lathe such as the Chinese-made "7X's" or similar. (The prudent buyer obtains these for a bit more cost at reliable retailers like Grizzly Industrial or LittleMachineShop. Theirs have better quality control. Buy one at a bargain rate retailer and you can expect casting sand in the gearbox, etc., etc., etc. Precision costs money. Buying "seconds" is a false economy.)
 
3. Because so much of the price of any lathe or mill is dependent upon the tooling you will eventually be buying, and because much of it may be proprietary, careful consideration needs be given to the brand that one is purchasing and how available less expensive generic tooling might be. Similarly, one needs to decide between metric and Imperial standards. The advantage of the Chinese 7X's for modeling, or anything else for that matter, is that there's millions of them so there's tons of tooling available in standard thread patterns. That often makes a huge difference in cost in the long run. On the other hand, a proprietary part for an "oddball" lathe or mill can sometimes cost so much repairs become pointless.
 
4. A lathe with a milling attachment can do milling operations. A mill cannot do lathe operations.  
 
5. Within broad limits, of course, every size lathe can do smaller work, but none can do work larger than the physical limits of the diameter and length of work pieces. (For example, the Chinese mini-lathes will spin a 7" diameter work piece which is as long as its bed. A "7X14" allows you work anything within a 7" by 14" size envelope.) You won't go wrong with a larger lathe, but many find they need to later buy a larger lathe, or wished they had. 
 
6.  Not only is a lathe the most versatile machine tool of all, but it is also the most dangerous. Rotary saws may injure a greater number of people, but only because there are so many more of them. A lathe is not a machine to be operated intuitively. It demands at least a basic understanding of its operation and a thorough grounding in safety protocols. Get somebody who knows what they are doing to instruct you or take a class at the local adult education junior college or something. Even a relatively small lathe can kill you.  A mini-lathe might not kill you, but it can still maim you pretty good. Never forget that.  https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/nyregion/yale-student-dies-in-machine-shop-accident.html
 
7.  If I were buying a mini-lathe today, I'd be looking at something like these:
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-4-x-6-Micro-Metal-Lathe/G0745
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-7-x-14-Variable-Speed-Benchtop-Lathe/G0765
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-8-x-16-Variable-Speed-Benchtop-Lathe/G0768
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-9-x-19-Bench-Lathe/G4000