The usual way would be to use a fixed steady but if you have to do this regularly it would be a bit of a faff.

Regards.

David.

Again I would suggest a look at my web pages on using a fixed steady, as per David's method. Look here for the appropriate page,

Harold

HI Richard & Guy's
I needed a fixed steady for a job on my S7 . So i made a simple one and it works well
Nobby

A quick and dirty solution is to clamp a chunky piece of wood to the cross slide and drill/bore to bar size from the head stock. You can always slit it to the center with a couple of screws to clamp it.

Seeing as you are only centering there will be little or no radial load.

Will do for a one off job.

Hello Dave in the Emerald Isle,

Thank you, but the idea isn't really that novel. It was a furniture commission job, the bars were 16mm grade 304 stainless steel 800mm long, to be drilled and tapped M4 at one end, there were I think 12 such bars to do.

It worked very well, the steady at the tailstock end was only there as a loose support, all the thrust for drilling came from the X slide. Setting up was a doddle using the co-axial indicator which allows viewing from one side over a full rotation around the work. It had been a christmas present to myself the previous year. I did test it against the more traditional method with a finger DTI, using a mirror to view the difficult sides; there was really no contest.

Regards

Brian