L 6 are rare as your ad on Ebay shows, you are it. None are coming up sold either.

You've got 2 bidders, none of which are traders so they might fight it out.

L6 are just too big and heavy for transport and most shed workshops.

The lathes.co seller is a dealer, he has 3 large lathes under his name.

Fair value on the open market is difficult for machines like this, a lot comes down condition, accessories and to how much effort the buyer will need to put into moving it.

However the Harrison L series lathes are pretty desirable because they're in the class of machines which are proper industrial tools, but small (or more specifically light) enough for a hobbyist to be able to have at home without serious upheaval; I wouldn't expect you to have too much trouble selling it.

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I would expect it to fetch between £800 – £2500 to a private seller depending on condition and accessories, assuming that it's easily available to load onto transport (good access for a Trailer or Small Hiab Vehicle), being in a position to assist with loading (if a neighbour or family friend has lifting equipment they can loan or come along with) will help getting the maximum value possible.

Make an effort to catalogue all the things that go with the lathe, photograph them, and capture that in the advertisement, cleaning everything (say 30-40 minutes to sweep up and swarf, wipe dust or oily gunk off etc) and tidy the area around the lathe before photographing it, will also increase your ability to get a good price.

I would suggest that listing it as a "buy it now" item on eBay and slowly reducing the price if it doesn't sell within a month or so is a good option to recover maximum value if you have the time. If it continues to not sell or you need to speed things up, you can then move to an auction easily.

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All that said, you might end up dropping as low as £400-£500 if access is awkward, and the deal is that the buyer has to remove it from the workshop and move it a substantial distance to a location where they can load it.

If you know you're in that position, it may be easier to accept that you won't realise the full market value to begin with and sell to a dealer who is well prepared to deal with this aspect, rather than have several iterations of "Failed" sales where you go to a lot of effort and aggravation only for the whole thing to fall through.

You need to make the call as to whether you want to realise the maximum value for your uncle, or just have a painless removal process.

In any case if access is awkward, you will do yourself a massive favour by documenting where the lathe is, and the route it needs to move along to where it can be loaded, and either sharing this with interested parties, or if selling by auction, putting it in the listing clearly.

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Regards weighing it in, Ferrous Scrap prices are currently showing £180-£200 for "Grade 9-10 Cast" and £155-£185 for "Grade 5 Light Iron", with the L6 weighing around 780kg you'd realise between £128 – £156 if you weighed the lathe in, and a scrap merchant who had to collect it and move it further than they can immediately reach with a hiab truck, may only offer to take it away for free to reflect their costs.

You would almost certainly make a better return selling to a machinery dealer than to a scrappy (who if they have any sense is going to have a dealer they run things like this by when the receive them in).

I have a Harrison L6, it came complete with inverter, faceplate, catch plate, 2 x 4 jaw and 2 x 3 jaw chucks, fixed and travelling steadies, burnerd multi fix collet chuck and full set of collets, Dixon tool post, with about 6 holders, loads of tooling plus the Harrison boring table and the conversion gear for metric threads. I gave £1800 for it in 2020. It’s never been in industry only model engineer owned so in perfect condition. If that helps?

Paul.

When I picked up the L6 I went with a crew of four with all of the above, plus two sheets of 8 x 4 x 3/4” ply split into two lengthwise to make a roadway across the grass plus a haltrac type hoist to hold it back as the grass was down hill! It was quite a difficult move as it had to be turned 90 degrees, pulled out through a standard door, turned again, moved across the grass and over a drain into a narrow passage between the houses, out into the road, lifted on the engine crane and the trailer backed underneath. I was very fortunate in having an experienced machine mover on the crew! All went very smoothly really but it took us about 3hrs in total to get it on the trailer.

Did a similar exercise collecting my omnimill but we winched that onto the trailer and was most fortunate we had a forklift the other end to lift it off! I will need to move both machines again in the future! With care and good planning everything is possible.

Paul.