The tail stock on my lathe needed some attention so this page is about a few little things I did to improve the tail stock.
The spindle of the tail stock was tight and It turned out that the slot in the bottom of the spindle was burred. This slot is used to prevent the spindle from turning in the tail stock. This has occurred from the hi torque that the tail stock endures during drilling pushing against the small diameter of the stop screw. This may not happen If the screw was replaced with a small key or of the spindle was harder. To fix the burrs, I used a fine file and removed the obvious burrs and then blued it to get the last little high spots off. Following that I polished the out surface of the spindle with some fine wet and dry paper and used a rag and some crc to clean off all the grit.( do this till the rag is completely clean) As the factory finish in side the bore was a bit hairy, I decided that I wanted to clean it up without compromising the fit of the quill. I figured that the bore just needed the hi spots removed and so I got a little engine cylinder hone and ran that through a few times. This worked wonders without removing too much material. I now had a spindle which moved freely in and out of the tail stock body.
The next thing was to tackle the bed clamping mechanism. When you turn the clamping lever, there is a eccentric that pulls the clamping bolt up against the bed. For some time this bolt would move(unscrew) and I would have to reach under and re-adjust this. What a pain! Here in this next picture is the bed clamp plate showing the original bolt. The idea was to do what many lathes have and that is a slot which prevents the head of the bolt rotating.
So that I could use the existing bolt I decided that the plate had to be as thin as possible and so a piece of 6mm scrap plate was selected cut down to size ready for the slotting operation. The slotting operation is shown in this next picture.
Once this slot was done, I marked, centre popped and drilled that hole through the centre of the piece. After drilling the hole I used a piece of emery cloth to clean up all the edges. Here is a photo of the bolt sitting in its retaining slot. After this a gave it a coat of paint to stop it rusting up.
The next job was still on the clamp mechanism which clamps the tailstock to the lathe bed. I noticed that the eccentric and the part that it rotates in were quite rough. I gave the eccentric a light polish with emmery tape and used the little engine hone to get the high spots from the inside of the other part. Even thought surfaces of both parts still looked a bit rough, the eccentric now moved smoothly, just what I was after.
Here is a pic of the ecentric and the other part that is turns in.
Now that all the mechanical repair has been carried out, it time for some pretty stuff! I stripped the tail stock right down and I sanded it back and primed it using an auto type primer in a spray pack can. I like to used a spray pack can for primer to save having to dirty the spray gun just for a small quantity of paint.
I do use the spray gun for the top coats as the paints don't come in a pressure pack can. Once primed, I used some auto filler to fill the deep gouges and after some filing and sanding I gave it another coat of primer/spray filler and a bit more sanding to get it looking right. Here is the tail stock all painted and reassembled.
