I've got a 1440 Chinese lathe from Precision Mathews. Its not the cats meow, but its still better than any other lathe I have. Often when taking facing cuts or parting cuts I like to lock the carriage. The bolt for that is a recessed socket head screw. It works ok, but it seems I am always looking around for the hex key when I want to release it and move the tool away from the stock. Unless I am holding it in my hand the whole time it always takes me a couple seconds longer than I would like to locate where I set it down.
I've been thinking about about making a taller head replacement bolt, drilling it for a small vise handle. I've got a bit of 4140QT shaft on hand and a bit of 1/4" 1144 rod. Making it should be no big deal. Any reason why I shouldn't. I'd keep it as low as possible, and make the handle about half the difference in length between a short arm and a long arm hex key that size.
Speaking of such I'd also like to lock the cross slide from time to time. There isn't a lock on it, but it does have a tapered gibb that's easily adjustable with a screw at each end. Usually I just keep the gibb adjusted a little bit tighter than is perfectly comfortable to spin the hand wheel, but on heavy roughing cuts it can still back off on longer pieces of stock. I wind up standing there with my hand on the hand wheel and my eye on the DRO the whole time. Is that just the best way to do it?