A friend has a very old 6 inch swing metal cutting treadle lathe. He has made a short dead center to fit the tailstock taper by file and fit. He didn't know what the actual taper of the tailstock ram was and asked me to determine it so he could get some tooling for it. I measure it as a B&S #5, but there is no tooling available as far as I can see. I have looked in the following catalogs: MSC, J&L, KBC and Grand Tool. At a minimum, he'd like to get dead and live centers, and a drill chuck to fit in there.
I can find limited tooling in B&S #7 and #9.
My question: Is there some group of machines that uses such a size, like jeweler's lathes or something? Does anybody have such tooling?
If I continue to come up dry on this, I will probably make him a new tailstock ram in Morse #2.
Pete Stanaitis
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