Dead simple lathe tool height gauge

[mklotz]

I'm afraid my method wasn't very exciting or innovative. I already had, through much fiddling, shimmed a facing tool to be perfectly on center and leave no trace of a center pip when cutting a variety of materials, even softish aluminum. I merely stuck the height gauge on the top of the compound and measured the height of this tool, then duplicated that height on the gauge I made.

Had I not had that already-centered lathe tool available, I would probably have used a method very similar to what TM51 described.

I've seen people advise using a dead center in the tailstock as a height center. For me there are two problems here. First, many lathes do not have the tailstock perfectly aligned in the vertical with the lathe spindle axis. (Errors in this plane are not nearly as apparent as misalignments in the horizontal plane.) Secondly, at least for me, aligning anything to a sharp point is not as easy as aligning to a plane.

If you use TM51's method, be sure you have a truly cylindrical rod and hold it in a collet or, lacking collets, use a 4jaw and take the time to get it running true.