Tailstock turrets are very useful for multiple components. The turret is, I think, described in Spareys book.

ega … Radford's design looks excellent, and has been on my 'must make one of those sometime' list for more years than I care to remember … some photos would be of great interest.

Phil … I think reducing the Sparey design to five stations might greatly improve 'handling'.

MichaelG.

Full details, including drawings, are in MEW issue 178

Mike

If Philip doesn't have the drawing to go with his castings, David Clark 1 is right: the drawing is on page 59 of Sparey's book. Looks as if it would be easy to modify to four or five tools.

Another problem with tailstock turrets on small lathes is the limited tailstock quill travel which makes it hard to cope with tools of different lengths. Sliding the tailstock back and forth in the usual manner helps up to a point but you still have to remember where the long tools are going when using the short ones. Conventional answer is to use extensions so everything is a similar effective length as shown by ega but now the bed avaliable for a workpiece is defined by the longest tool. Most of us don't have enough bed length to be cavilier about wasting space anyway. Figuring how to accommodate a long drill for a single operation has to be done but setting up so that all operations leave sufficient space is a couple of orders of magnitude worse.

My Smart & Brown 1024 has more room and more tailstock travel than most homeworkshop folks lathes but its still not enough to make my tailstock turret a regular fitment. Its a proper professional 5 station one with excellent rigidity but still a PIA most of the time. There is a good reason why such devices are relatively rare in professional use even though they make the right job go much faster. Probably one of those things where you have to deceide you are really going to exploit it and modify your working style to cope. Bilt like a Palm Pilot or Filofax I guess.

The Radford design QC tailstock toolholder is interesting but seems over engineered for its task. If you don't mind spinning the tailstock quill back to eject every tool putting single tool holders on the requisite MT taper looks to be just as effective. Alternatively a face cam flange and operating lever set-up could be a used to pop the Morse taper out without moving the tailstock quill. Flange on the toolholder, lever on a collar clamped to the tailstock looks the most economical way to go but it you needed full tailstock retraction a lever could be fitted to each holder. Probably need roller followers. If a self hiding spnner is acceptable then the lever could be dispensed with and the pop off device worke by a simple rotating square or heaxagonal sleeve.

Clive.