Well, it took a few months to wind its way from the USA to the beautiful Forest of Dean UK, but I now have my spindle, and it’s been in use for a while now.

The original clone quill assembly (with the Myford collet nose) is on the left, and the well-travelled Emco assembly is on the right. There are a few differences, notably the large bearing at the top. My clone’s head casting doesn’t have enough depth to accommodate the Emco bearing, but it’s an easy fix: Just unclip the circlip and the large bearing and gear slides out, then just swap them – they interchange perfectly. A very minor modification was also made to the oil seal position on the clone’s head, but that’s a subject that would be better detailed in the ‘Emco FB2: Quirks and Additions’ thread, if anyone’s interested.

Anyway, the difference is night and day. The spindle play is now barely measurable, and this shows in the ease of making cuts and the surface finish. I feel I could quite easily make twice the depth of cut that I could before, and finally, I can centre-find using a DTI. I’m really enjoying using my FB2 clone now, and I was very lucky the quill assembly turned up at the right time.

I’m also in a position to investigate the problem with the original spindle at my leisure, but that’s now much lower on the priority list. If anyone’s interested in the original fault, please reply here and I’ll make an effort to strip it and diagnose properly.

All the best, Paul