It's a very nice lathe. I need to check it's levelness again and keep forgetting. I haven't actually used it all that much altho' I have had it for four years (got it just before the price skyrocketed) I highly recommend it, even tho' now, I consider it to be too high priced. I have a 9" Enco which truthfully, I consider to be too small, a kiddies toy--no insult to those of you who have these small lathes, after all a toy lathe is better than no lathe.
In my not so humble opinion, any lathe that one should obtain should have LH thread ability, slow enough speed to make threads comfortably, swing large enough to turn parts larger than one expects when you actuaLly buy it, and other important items. The Enco's slowest speed is 130 RPM, not slow enough for threading under power. The Grizz's slowest speed is 70RPM, would prefer 50 but 70 I can thread easily.
The kiddie toys also have one feature that almost completely kills them for me: the screw on spindle threads. Even when I tightened the set screw on the threaded 3 jaw, when using the reverse function, the would often work it's way off the spindle. As we all know, this could be disasterous. The Grizz has D1-5 Camlock which I consider the very best type of spindle. My only problem with this type of spindle is that the taper is only about 1/2" long which creates problems when one wishes to make replacement back plates. I use the test indicator technique to line up the compound slide for turning that taper. The 1/2", I consider too short to be highly accurate. Maybe it doesn't need to be all that accurate but I prefer these types of interfaces to be highly accurate. (So far I have only made one, not well but a great learning experience.)
My biggest complaint is that the cross slide has no slots which I intend to rectify.
