Price of lathe tools

[Donald G]

Hello, I have an old ML7, which when I checked it properly on first setting up, had the same problem. After I had set the lathe up square and level, and carried out all the checks, I noticed my No.2 Morse taper Jacobs chuck, or for that matter my centre would not sit nicely in it, (wobbled).
I managed to borrow a No 2 taper reamer, which I set in the 4 jaw chuck, set it up with a dial gauge, then in lowest backgear, I moved the tailstock until the reamer was just inside the bore, tightened it all down and very gently advanced the tailstock using the handwheel, it took only a couple of revs of the lathe to clear the problem, and a check showed a good finish, my tapers fitted beautifully. That was about 14 years ago and it is still as good now.

Just take it very gently... you are only trying to remove a few thou at any one time.

I hope this may help you.

Donald

[jackrae]

A point to bear in mind when reaming tapers.
As you remove metal from the bore the taper angle remains the same but the bore diameter increases (obviously)
This means your taper shanked tools have to go deeper into the bore before the male/female tapers lock up
Some designs of tooling have shoulders at the end of their male tapers. If you enlarge the taper bore too much in your reaming operation it is possible for this shoulder to meet the bore end before the male/female tapers start to mate