Shopsmith Forums

When preparing to do lathe work, does everyone align the point on the cup center so as to touch the point on the drive center or is there another way to do this accurately?

With the lift assist installed, I can not do that. The quill will not extend far enough.

I know that there are extenders, etc that will bring the two together but I do not have those and I do not do enough lathe work to justify acquiring them. That being the case, am I stuck with taking the lift assist off?

I think I recall reading that you can attach the drill chuck and mount a straight brad point bit and use that as a reference.

Get outa here! Now that just sounds too logical to have not thought of it.

This assumes my chuck chucks correctly.

algale wrote:I think I recall reading that you can attach the drill chuck and mount a straight brad point bit and use that as a reference.

Thank you, Algale.

That worked perfectly. For purposes of learning how to do this, I moved to the Shorty which has no lift assist. Using the drive center and a cup center, I was able to do the set up.

Then I backed the headstock off, mounted a chuck and brad point bit and relocated the headstock. The tips were very, very close together but not "right on". Then, quite by accident, I discovered that the headstock lock had not been secured.

Doing what should have been done to start with, securing the headstock put the two tips "right on" again.

Thank you, again. This simple tip saved a lot of frustration.

I know that you turners out there are getting a chuckle and that is OKAY. I learned something through all of this and I relearned for the millionth time that the locks are important and do effect alignment.

These photos are very good but I think they show the error.

This is good to know, I tried too align mine last week and found out with the lift assist could not do it.

My way may not be the best for some, but it works for me. I slit the rubber spacer along (parallel) the way tube. This allows me to remove it and to put it back when needed for aligning a saw blade into the insert on the saw table.

When the rubber spacer ring is removed it will allow touching the point of the drive center with the point of the tail center.

Disclamer: Don't know if this will work with the lift assist!