Thanks, Paul. It's a great deal quicker than turning a test piece between centers, measuring the resulting taper, and then trying to calculate the required tailstock setover, set up a DI to measure the required movement and then repeat all this until no taper is turned.
Short tapers are best turned using the compound. For longer tapers, an offsetable (is that a word?) tailstock center is worth building if one has more than a few tapers to make. Once I have the tailstock aligned, I hate to offset it so the offsetable style appeals to me.
For the benefit of folks who may not be familiar with them, use Google Images with a search term of
offsetable tailstock center
to see pictures of what I'm on about. [Google seems to understand 'offsetable' so I guess it is a word.]
and, of course, Amazon sells them...
https://www.amazon.com/IMPROVED-TURN...%2C117&sr=8-35
https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Sha...%2C117&sr=8-36