great video: Never thought of using the headstock with center, makes perfect sense. I have reamed my Chi/Com 13x40 several times with little success. will give this method a try before ordering new Quil.

I agree,no power from live centre,only by hand when reaming this as this taper and anything under 7degrees(3.5 off of spindle axis) is designed for locking in place.1st light ream with dead centre taper extended and locked then halfway out and locked then fully retracted and locked to correct for misaligned.Surface Hardness maintained for 0.254mm or 10"thou of inch.Just under 40"/1.0mm.Make sure spindle bearings warmed up for less live centre clearances and lightest oiled cuts possible.

S a previous comment said always make sure barrel and spindle are perfectly lined up first of all. I wouldn't be too worried about getting a full cut just as long as you get a perfect fit , always use oil and don't lock anything up, just get your arm behind it and keep a steady push.

As has been already mentioned it will be a simple operation to face off the end of the quill to reduce the ID down to a size that allows good clearance on your sleeves. But I'm just wondering if you aligned the tailstock to the best possible prior to doing this? In my opinion machines of this age are nearly always worn and the tailstock will be below the centre line of the spindle and require shimming. In which case you will be cutting a new MT seat at an angle in relation to the spindle. I would check this before you go any further. Personally I'd clock the outside of the quill now and verify alignment as best as possible, then I'd ream until fully cleaned up and then face off as much as needed. It'll probably only be a small amount. Look forward to an update.

I made both my old sebastian lathes mt 5 they were mt4 but had alot of ware. Great info thanks. New subscriber.

Surely mounting it and dialling it in a on a 4 jaw would be more precise and assist with alignment also. Also, VERY accurate headstock alignment would be crucial BEFORE this. Cheers, Michael 🇦🇺

The MT5 on my new to me Jet lathe tailstock quill is pretty rough. I need to see if I can save it with a reamer. Thanks for the tips.

Great explanation. I had to do a bit of this on my own lathe, and I used the same basic approach. In your case, if you had to ream deeper, and you started to run into issues with the tooling hitting the end of the tailstock quill, I imagine you could chuck it up and machine a little bit off the end, to regain at least some of that clearance.

I have a tail stock that needs cleaned up. Dialed in the TS and bought two new MT3 reamers, set it up the same as you did but I am not seeing any chips ? It’s like it just scrapes and doesn’t cut ? I tried the roughing reamer first, then the finish reamer once it felt smooth. I can still feel the gouges in the tail stock. I am going to chuck the reamer up in the four jaw next and try to run it at 75 RPM’s to see if I can remove some material. The quill is cast iron and polished I do believe. Also I have a second machine (identical) that was missing the whole quill assembly. So I machined a new one out of 1144 stress proof and it needs the taper cut in the end. Would you recommend using the reamers or cutting it in with a boring bar then just the “finish reamer” ? I’m ok if I need to face the end but It just doesn’t seem like it’s cutting. It did improve the fit and the tooling is definitely more secure. It no longer requires slamming it in to seat. It just locks in. But it looks terrible and like I said I can feel the groves inside the taper. I wanted a full new machined taper that is smooth and clean. Also I noticed it only makes contact at the very front on the quill. The back of the taper isn’t really getting touched. I checked the handbook and it’s definitely not supposed to be like that. I’m not a pro, and I’m not a beginner, but I don’t have much experience with cutting tapers with reamers. I’ve always used reamers as a last pass kinda thing. How much force are you putting on the tail stock quill when cutting by hand ? Should it be hard to rotate the reamer from the tension placed on the quill? Sorry. Didn’t mean to type out a ten paragraph comment. Thanks for any reply’s.

if you go too deep you can face the tail stock

well Hiltz.......I am needing to do this on a 1942 South Bend 13......were your reamers high quality or import inexpensive ? cheers from Florida, Paul

I had this issue with the internal taper on my spindle (previous owner seriously damaged it) and I did the same operation you demonstrated, but with the reamer pointed the other direction. I was aware of the engagement depth changing and I was measuring it as I went, but I kept going until I had a usable taper inside the spindle. That put my engagement depth a half inch into the spindle bore. Now I can use draw collets (where previously I couldn't use *anything* ) - but that's it. Unlike with the tailstock I can't just face it off. What would you do (going forward, not in retrospect) in this situation? Right now I'm contemplating going even deeper with the reamer, as far as it will go, then pull a MT3 blank out of the freezer and drive it in hard, and then bore out the blank and turn it for MT3, ream it to the proper depth. Basically a permanent sleeve repair.

No oil?

That's a great way to destroy a good machine for sure.