Knew that friend; internet being what it is. Think it's important to convey what might benefit lurkers ages beyond the present day. It's possible they'll be rebuilding shops, out of what we've started collectively. We're lucky to ride along with nearly direct contact to Industrial Revolution, the beginnings of mass production, production during WWII.
They might not.
re Victor Lathes; I'd place them among best of the class under Mori Seiki, Okuma, (certain) Tsudakoma, etc; which isn't bad at all. That group is Webb, Cadillac, Tsudakoma, Izaki (Okuma license), some old ENCO's, early Jet; not just a few really good machines.
(edit) I doubt any will run across one, a real surprise in the Herter lathes. Imported by a company in Compton CA, it really presented a handful of goodies; as if a qualified lathe engineer cherry-picked all the Asian output for best features. It would rate higher but only saw one in 50+ years to gauge by.
Might be able to expound lathe features hours on end; boiled down its about footprint, envisioned use, budget and what present tooling you have to support it.
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