lathe/4th axis conversion question

Hi,

I recently put together a 4th axis indexer. However I didn’t have a tailstock so bought a secondhand pair of head and tailstock units to adapt the tail. As they are a matching pair and I won’t have to raise the height of my existing 4th axis indexer i'm just wondering now whether I could just adapt this new pair to make the 4th axis and keep the previous 4th axis indexer build for another project.

I’m just a bit curious about the origin of these stock and particularly wondering what is going on at the rear of the headstock and how to adapt that for a HTD pulley. How was the headstock oringally driven?

Tail and head looks like they take a MT1 , centre is 4 1/2 inches from base

thanks

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Looks like an old lathe headstock and tailstock. Headstock spindle would have been driven by a stepped pulley between the bearings. Don't know about that thrust bearing arrangement at the back end!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Neale

Looks like an old lathe headstock and tailstock. Headstock spindle would have been driven by a stepped pulley between the bearings. Don't know about that thrust bearing arrangement at the back end!

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I had a quick look at the thrust bearing assembly and loosening the nuts and bolts allows the whole spindle to slip out. i guess that's how the stepped pulley unit was removed.

reformatted reply..see below

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Neale

Looks like an old lathe headstock and tailstock. Headstock spindle would have been driven by a stepped pulley between the bearings. Don't know about that thrust bearing arrangement at the back end!

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Hi,

Just a quick question about what live centre to get for the tailstock. Apparently these lathe parts were made somewhere between 1880 and 1910! oh yeh. I'm completely new to the big world of lathes and have a question about the taper on the barrel of mine. The barrel aperture is around 19.23mm and its around 52mm deep and the barrel is tapered.
What taper and size should I be looking at? Morse taper or complettly other type?
Any thoughts appreciated

I was going to suggest if it's that old, it might be something totally random, but a search suggests the Morse Taper has existed since 1864.

19.23 would put it around MT2, which the mouth should officially be 0.7" or 17.78mm. MT3 should be 0.938" or 23.83mm.

Best option would probably be to find something cheap that has an MT2 taper, and try it for fit. Have a search for a drill (if you know any local engineers/blacksmiths, they may have some broken drills), reducer adapter, or dead centre.