Here is drawing of spindle.

David

Just had a look at my M-type and refreshed my memory from when I rebuilt the tailstock years ago.

There is a tiny 1/8" grub screw that holds that key in place. The grubscrew descends vertically down from the top of the tailstock casting, directly above the key. Original probably had a screwdriver slot in the grub screw, I replaced mine with a allen type grub screw, so must have been 1/8 BSW (or more likely UNC that will fit right in.)

Once you scrape the 25 layers of paint off the tailstock right above the key you should be able to see the grub screw and either screw it out or drill it out.

The the key can be tapped inwards until it falls out. Dont tap it outwards as the mashed end will score the hole in the tailstock.

The key is a piece of 1/4" round bar with the end machined down into a tang that fits into the slot in the tailstock quill. The tang is the width of the slot, minus a thou or so clearance, and it runs across the full width of the 1/4" diameter bar. I made mine by filing down the end of a piece of bar to suit.

Will try and take a pic with my phone and post it shortly.

Her's what the key looks like in its unmashed condition. Disregard color – some weird lighting autocorrect thing. It's just a piece of silver steel bar, unhardened.

I don't know how Heavy Handed Herbert managed to drive the key through the very coarse threads on the tailstock quill with that tiny handwheel on the Drummond tailstock. I coiuld not even get enough purchase to comfortably drill small holes so I made and added two Myford-style crank handles as below.

The little divot on the rim of the handwheel is worth adding too. Previous owner did that with the tip of a drill bit. Acts as an index mark to count the turns of the wheel and thus depth of hole drilled. One turn = 1/8", half turn = 1/16", quarter = 1/32", eighth = 1/64" etc. Surprisingly accurate depthing is very easy.

Bazyle,

You could use one of these. The pre war drummond longbeds had a much longer tailstock barrel presumably to compensate for the wider cross slide. I've been meaning to fit this to my post war Myford M but never seem to get round to it.

This is because I have a lever tail stock and it would require some mods to the linkage for me to really benefit from the extra barrel length.

Hopper, I remember Ed Maisey drilled holes around the circumference of his hand wheel and inserted short bar lengths so it resembled a ships capstan. Nice job on yours with the two crank handles. To me they look more like drummond cranks than myford cranks, more rounded on the end.

Geoff

Ah yes Bazyle. Mine is a modern one, 1937, so maybe a bit different.

Still marvelling at Heavy Handed Harry's efforts. He must have had the four-foot Stillsons on the handwheel to do that, surely? And I wonder if your lathe's paint is ship's engine room colour?

Hi Geoff, I did not fancy Maisey's capstan version. Looked to me like you'd be forever catching sleeves etc on the spokes. And yes my crank handles are a copy of the Drummond cross slide handles so it looks as original as possible, just located in the ML7 etc position. They were an interesting project with my homemade ball turning tool adapted to turn the concave section. It's a great mod though. Totally got rid of my major niggle with the old girl. Been meaning to do the lever conversion for years though…

Edited By Hopper on 04/11/2019 21:56:16