Hi all I made my rack and feed tailstock mechanism usig a Fruit press(Vertical Type) Try to get one with a Ram with the rack in it as near to same diameter as the bore of the tailstock barrel ,if not you will have to bore out the casting to suit carefully to maintain accuracy and bore a new Morse taper in the Ram,or you can simply Extend the barrel by fitting the ram to the end of barrell by whatever means this allows you to revert to the original setup that came with the lathe a method I choose to adopt. You can also use the head which contains the pinion and the feed handle,I had to cut this off the press and machine a recees to allow it to be fixed to the tailstock casting using Dowels and Grubscews .Again this must be done accurately to maintain the correct mesh between Rack and Pinion.A cheap source for Fruit presses is Car Boot fairs or Charity shops I bought both mine for 50 p each ,I need the other one for to covert my 9" South Bend.Hope this helps .EDC