If you pause and relect carefully, you realize that a negative attitude toward new machine tools would have kept us in the dark ages (for it was the lathe that took us out of the dark ages)  with a despotic religious cult dictating what we could or could not make and dominating every aspect of our lives. My apologies if I have offended any cult member or machinist with a retro outlook on our craft. And so, I call the Craft from refreshment to labor. Harken ye to the following:

A screw cutting lathe brought us to light and is directly responsible for providing us with our current way of life. Even the finest lathe available will not perform beyond certain peramiters.

A tool post grinder increases the accuracy possible when using the average home sshop lathe. A toolpost grinder, used with the compound set at 82 degrees is capable of removing miniscule amounts of metal from a workpiece at each pass. The downside is that dry grinding produces considerable amounts of heat, resulting in rapid wear of the cutting stone (often resulting in a very slight taper of the workpiece) and also producing cconsiderable heat, which in turn expands the workpece ever so sllightly. One must allow it to cool to room temp. before miking.

An industrial honing machine, on the other hand, is, in effect, a slow speed wet grinder the use of which does not result in metal expansion of the workpiece. There is even a handy faucet to wash off the piece before miking, to prevent making a false reading. Honing can be done internally or externally on a workpiece.

The end result is a piece part that is accurate (to millionths of an inch) that has a surface regularity of 3-5 micro inches on steel bar stock usually found in amateur shops.

Not even the finest Hardinge lathe can do that, gents.

Is it worth the cost? That, gentlemen, is dependent, like so many other things in life, on the depth of your pockets and the contents of your swag bag.

Those not able to afford a honing machine may make use of shpop made adjustable laps to attain similar results with considerably mpore elbow grease…but, the end result is identical. Poor people have poor ways. I usd lead and copper laps for decades before I could afford a honing machine. Sadly, however, about a month after I obtained the Sunnen, my need for making bullet swaging dies to very tight tolerances faded to black, as some commercial bullet makers had also gotten the message and were producing everything I needed at a modest cost. (Sigh.)

When Pharoah's army was gaining on me, I asked "De Lawd" to send me a Sunnen Indistrial Hone to part the waters of Hoodlum Lake, but he just shook his head and dropped a hammer and chisel on me. "Waid a few thousand years." was all He said.

I have no doubt that some lucky gink was able to buy something efl at an action, but I always end up paying too much. If I really, really need the item, and I can't find one anywhere else, I will play the Ebay game, bt I hate having to outbid everyone in the Cosmos.