I have some old booklet where it says you just take booth of the centers and put them inside headstock and tailstock. You remove that big spring at the back of the lathe and push the headstock forward as much as it goes. Next you move tailstock towards headstock until points meet and eyeball the aligntment. I found this to be accurate enough. I use some lupe to magnify points as my eyes are not what they used to be.

I picked up a Unimat Lathe like this back in the 80’s at a flea market in practically unused condition fort $200. What a steal.

hi Saar-thanks for the refresher and yes I watch Mr. Pete's videos too. we finally got off the road in our RV and into our new home so I'll be setting up my new watch shop including my Unimat workbench, soon. I think my next video will be on the Unimat dividing/indexing head.

Hello Saar,

I understand this video is 3 yo but will take a shot: I noticed you were licking your head on the back of it, and not using the lock pin on the side, could you describe how you do that or show it in pictures/video?

Hello, that will work for me to. I was thinking getting another head stock and fix it up in the back middle. So always have mill. But in till then use that way. Arrow would work in pinch long as not bent.

Hello Saar. I'm thinking that a small DC motor with a rheostat to control speed and a reversing switch to power the feed. Could be driven by an O ring to a narrow sheave mounted behind the hand wheel. O ring could be easily removed for manual function. 🤷🏼‍♂️. 🇺🇸😎

The procedure tests for the line between the pointy ends of the dead centers to be parallel to the rails: it does not test for the spindle axis to be parallel to the rails. Am I missing something?

Do you no we're I would be able to get the harding steal center from. I have one of them that came with this lathe but not two?

Useful video, thanks. It seems like you could align quicker and maybe save yourself a back-and-forth or two with a quick calculation. Let's say it's 80mm from where your indicator starts to where it stops, and your indicator shows a 200 micron change in that distance. That means your slope is 200/80 = 2.5 microns per mm. The offset you're missing is the distance from the tip of the tail to your indicator start position. Let's say that's 20mm. 20mm * 2.5 microns per mm = 50 microns. So if you change your initial adjustment to 200 microns + 50 microns = 250 microns, you'll be a lot closer the first time.