Thin-walled cylindrical machining is prone to vibration due to their weak stiffness, leading to deteriorated tool wear and surface finish. Knowledge of the vibration characteristics of the thin-walled components plays a fundamental role in the vibration control for machining applications. This paper presents an experimental investigation into vibrational behaviors of thin-walled tubular workpieces in turning operations. For a clamped-free thin-walled cylindrical workpiece, its circumferential shell vibration mode was more sensitive to the material removal than the axial beam vibration mode, and the natural frequencies corresponding to the shell vibration modes generally decreased during machining process. The support of the center could effectively enhance dynamic stability of the thin-walled cylinder and reduce vibrations. It was also shown that there was a notable non-uniform surface roughness distribution as well as the time-varying vibration responses along the workpiece. The chatter frequency associated with the mode of the thin wall workpiece could change during machining operations. The special surface textures induced by chatter vibrations deteriorated the roughness and were correlated with the variation of the dominant vibration frequency in machining.