Top 10 Best Wood Lathes (Reviews & Buyers’ Guide 2022)

First up on the list of the best wood lathes for sale is an instant favorite among professional woodworkers and hobbyists alike: the JET JWL-1221VS Variable Speed Wood Lathe 719200. Yes, lots of people are raving about this JET wood lathe, but why is it our top pick? One word: control.

Each and every inch of this JET wood lathe is built for smooth operation. Boasting 24 integrated indexing positions, it provides you with better control when you need to create evenly spaced grooves, flutes, and other patterns. It also allows for a smooth transition between forward and reverse modes.

To add to its ease of control, this JET wood lathe features an innovative ratchet-style belt tension system and offers a variable speed from 60 to 3,600 revolutions per minute. With this wide variable speed range, you can get the perfect speed when working with any type of wood.

With an Acme thread in its tailstock, this mini wood lathe moves and locks in place without any difficulty. Plus, its controls and digital readout are conveniently located at the front of the wood lathe, letting you adjust its settings with ease.

Users agree: the JET wood lathe’s drive belt is easy to move when changing the speed. Other things that they love about this wood lathe are its ultra-quiet operation and its solidly built cast iron construction, which keeps the lathe completely stable.

One of the cheapest of 2022’s best wood lathes for sale, the Shop Fox W1704 Benchtop Lathe offers everything you need and nothing you don’t. Included with this mini wood lathe are two tool rests (4 1/2- and 7-inch) to secure your gouge, scraper, and other turning tools.

Despite its fairly low price, this Shop Fox wood lathe boasts a powerful performance and heavy-duty cast iron construction. Users report that they were hesitant to buy this mini wood lathe at first because of its low price, but they’ve used it daily without any problem at all. Plus, they like how easy it is to speed up or slow down and how quiet it operates.

For non-spindle turning, this Shop Fox wood lathe comes equipped with a 5 3/4-inch faceplate. It threads onto the headstock spindle, so you can easily round out bowls and more.

Powered by a 1/3-horsepower motor, this mini wood lathe delivers variable speeds ranging from 700 to 3,200 revolutions per minute. Whether you’re working with softwood or hardwood, you can surely turn it with the utmost ease and precision when you use this lathe.

Specially designed for pen turners, the RIKON Power Tools 70-105 Mini Lathe offers just the right features for small woodturning projects. It features a 1/2-horsepower motor, which delivers five speeds from 500 to 3,200 revolutions per minute—perfect for roughing out pen billets and creating barrel holes.

Customers have used this mini wood lathe not only for turning pens but also for making bowls, ornaments, toys, and tool handles. They like its smooth, quiet, and powerful performance and that it’s stable without the need to bolt it down.

With a self-ejecting tailstock and a 6-inch tool rest, this RIKON wood lathe can secure tools for woodturning, drilling, threading, and more. It also comes equipped with an MT2 taper for pen mandrels and a nylon faceplate washer, making it the best wood lathe for pen turners and anyone working on small wood projects.

Featuring a powerful 2-horsepower motor and a 16-inch swing over bed, the Shop Fox W1758 Wood Lathe is the best wood lathe for professionals who frequently handle small and large woodworking projects. It combines a wide swing over bed with a 46-inch distance between centers, making it the biggest wood lathe on the list as well.

Users are impressed with how heavily built this large wood lathe is and how easy it is to set its speed. It offers 10 speed options ranging from 600 to 2,400 revolutions per minute. It also comes with a digital tachometer for an easy way of viewing the exact spindle speed.

Whatever turning tool you’re using, this large wood lathe can provide it with proper support. It has a three-way adjustable tool rest with an extension and easy-to-use locking handles, so you can easily adjust your tools to your desired height and distance.

Working with various sizes of workpieces won’t be a problem at all with this Shop Fox wood lathe. Its headstock can be positioned at five angles: 0, 60, 90, 120, and 180 degrees. What’s more, its precision tailstock features a cam-action clamping system, ensuring a secure attachment to the lathe bed.

When you have the Mophorn 12” x 18” Variable Speed Benchtop Wood Lathe, you can work with the utmost precision on various projects.

Equipped with a powerful 550-watt motor, this mini wood lathe delivers a variable speed ranging from 500 to 3,800 revolutions per minute, giving you optimal control over all kinds of wood. It also features an easy-to-read digital readout for precise speed adjustments.

Reviewers particularly like how easy it is to adjust the speed and how wide its speed range is. Professionals and even beginners without any lathe experience had no trouble assembling this mini wood lathe.

Constructed with cast iron and rubber feet, this mini wood lathe can stay stable—even in the busiest of projects—while ensuring a smooth operation. It also features MT2 headstock and tailstock tapers, a 12-inch swing over bed, a 3-inch faceplate, a 6-inch tool rest, and a live center. In other words, it lets you work with different tools and a wide range of wood objects without any difficulty.

As long as you have the PSI Woodworking KWL-1218VS Turn Crafter Commander Variable Speed Midi Lathe, you won’t ever have to purchase additional wood lathe tool accessories. Included in this set are two tool rests, tool storage rack, work light, faceplate, spur drive and live centers, hex wrenches, screwdriver, safety goggles, and more—making it one of the best wood lathes for the money.

Creating flutes, grooves, and other carvings won’t be a problem at all with this midi wood lathe, along with its 24 indexing positions. Powered by a 3/4-horsepower motor and an SBC microprocessor, it delivers a powerful performance with pinpoint accuracy.

With two belt positions, this midi wood lathe offers a wide range of speeds, from 500 to 2,000 and from 1,500 to 3,600 revolutions per minute. And for better accuracy, it features a digital readout, which displays the precise speed setting.

If you need a relatively large wood lathe without shelling out too much cash, the Mophorn 14” x 40” Variable Speed Benchtop Wood Lathe is your best wood lathe choice. With a 14-inch swing over bed and 40-inch distance between centers, it lets you accurately work on wood pieces in various sizes.

Equipped with a 1/2-horsepower variable-speed motor, this large wood lathe allows you to achieve your preferred sanding speed at 1,100 to 3,400 revolutions per minute. Its motor is designed for soft startups, ensuring a damage-free workpiece, allowing for smooth and quiet operation, and keeping the motor protected from wear and tear.

Constructed with solid steel, this large wood lathe provides you with a stable vibration-free work surface. It even includes three wrenches, which help you easily maintain the machine, three chisels for carving and shaping wood, a skew chisel, a shear scraper, and a spindle gouge. So not only will you have a wood lathe offering large work capacity—you’ll also have a complete set of tools for woodworking projects.

Versatile and powerful—these are the words that best describe the JET JWL-1440VSK Wood Lathe 719400K. It offers various features that can take on a wide range of woodturning projects—making it one of the best wood lathes on the market.

With a 14 1/2- by 40-inch lathe size and 36 indexing positions, this large wood lathe can help you accurately turn any of your ideas into well-crafted workpieces. It also lets you adjust the spindle speed from 400 to 3,000 revolutions per minute and displays the speed setting on its digital readout, giving you the right speed setting for the job.

This JET wood lathe comes equipped with a sliding and pivoting headstock and an improved tailstock with an anti-rotation key, providing you with maximum versatility and precision for any woodturning project. And because this JET wood lathe comes with full-size cast iron construction and stable legs, it completely meets the needs of professionals working on large-scale woodturning projects.

Heavier than a mini lathe, more portable than a large freestanding lathe, the RIKON Power Tools 70-220VSR VSR MIDI Lathe solves the Goldilocks conundrum of woodturners by offering just the right lathe size. Equipped with a 1-horsepower motor, it delivers a variable speed from 250 to 3,850 revolutions per minute—perfect for turning small platters, large bowls, and more.

This midi wood lathe features an LED screen, which displays the current speed setting. It also comes with convenient forward and reverse switches, so you can get the right woodturning direction for your project.

With 24 index positions, this midi wood lathe lets you create various patterns and designs with the utmost precision. Plus, it includes a tool rest, wrenches, a knockout bar, and more—giving you a complete set of wood lathe accessories.

Although the Grizzly Industrial H8259 Benchtop Wood Lathe comes last on the list, it’s equipped with just the right amount of features that make it one of the best wood lathes today. With a 10- by 18-inch lathe size, this mini wood lathe is the perfect benchtop machine for small woodturning projects.

Powered by a 1/2-horsepower motor, this mini wood lathe features five speeds ranging from 826 to 3,337 revolutions per minute. While its variable speed range isn’t as extensive as the other lathes, it’s wide enough for most woodworking projects.

Constructed with heavy-duty cast iron, equipped with adjustable leveling feet, this Grizzly wood lathe can stay stable and level even in the busiest of projects. It also comes with wrenches, a tool rest, a live rolling center, and a spur center for a convenient and complete set of wood lathe accessories.