Quote Originally Posted by toolman View Post
Very clever. Although I do, most won't have the ability to cast. The cord depth isn't deep. I wonder how well the piece would work if you were to dress the approximate contour with with a file, then lap it against the spindle with very fine (read "thin") sandpaper, and finally cut a relief along the axial center about 1/2" wide x .005" deep? Maybe rather than the contour of the spindle, just file a "vee" that's almost flat having an included angle of contact of perhaps 165-degrees...?
That would work fine. When Cuttting the contour in the gib i do it with a boring head in the mill/drill using a brass screw as a gib to take the slop out of the spindle, it has to be fairly tight but does work ok. You could start with a 3/4 or 1" x 3/8 piece of stock and use the V and be fine as long as the V stayed parallel, the reason for the contour is just to give more surface area so that gib doesn't have to be any tighter then necessary when performing a z axes process like when using a boring head and still lock effectively with the center locking screw.

Was it reasonably plain to see what i was doing without pictures???

Art