Checking a tapered reamer

[Philip Davies]

I wanted to see whether these two old reamers had been reground to a morse taper.
I do not know of any other way to do it easily, so I made this jig.

Firstly I scribed a line on a piece of MDF. Then I took a small disc, about 1/2” dia and screwed it to the line at the right end. Then I took two handy pieces of angle iron, salvaged from something, screwed them down with washers to stop them rising from the pressure of the clamp. Then I put in an old no.3 morse taper sleeve, tapped it along, tight. Then I clamped the bars together. Another disc, about 1&1/4” dia was pushed in from the left as far as it would go, then screwed down on the central scribed line.
That completed the jig. Trying the reamers, you may just see at once that they are not morse taper, but never mind.

If it had seemed a good fit, I would have tried one of these:

Can’t remember at present what it’s called!