Tailstock alignment.

[Frank S]

I had a guy come in and scrape the ways on one my old lathes. Ideally we should have removed the head stock then trued the entire bed but time and money really didn't allow this extensive of a repair to be done. Jack specialized in truing up machines for a living and although I knew the process and had done 1 or 2 bed scrapes on smaller lathes like Atlas and Craftsmen, but for my Victor 16/22x 60 I felt that a professional could do a better job a whole lot faster than I could have done at the time.
He rolled in a couple of wooden boxes and his tool chest then we started in. First he opened 1 8ft long box with a hollow 1.70" diameter truing bar in it and a polished thin wall tube about 18" long the thin tube went in the spindle bore to protect the truing bar as it was slid through the spindle My lathe had a back thread on the outside of the spindle where I kept a small 4 jaw chuck mounted for when I machined long cylinder rods so this was a help in checking the head alignment to the bed He put on a pair of nitril gloves than a pair of soft cotton gloves before he handled his truing bar after checking the bed in dozens of places he determined that about .003" would be the minimum that needed removed but that would still leave a slight dip of about .002" in one small 12" long area We opted to remove the full .005" Then he trued the cross slide but did not remove the carriage top from the apron which he felt really needed attention I just couldn't afford that extensive of a repair If I could have we would have removed the head stock to set everything perfect. After the work on the bed and cross slide was completed we removed the tail stock from its base and shimmed it back to the proper height it took nearly .015" apparently it had been low for along time or someone had scraped the bed long before I got the lathe.
I don't have a problem with a shimmed tail stock just like I didn't have a problem with paying the $1,500.00 for the work he did because it would have cost me twice that to have tried to do the job by myself even if I could have rented the necessary equipment that I didn't own for the task