Today for the first time made something useful on the lathe. A friend needed 4 stainless steel spacers for a packing machine that he is fixing. It took me almost 3 hours. I think I would starve to death if I'll have to make a living from my lathe skills.
I bought a 6.5mm DeWalt Extreme Cobalt drill for the holes. This drill is worth the money. After drilling ~170mm of stainless steel in total the cutting edge is still very sharp! It has also a triangular section on the tail so it doesn't slip in the chuck. I don't know why they don't make all drilling bits in this way.
This was a good time to use also my latest finding on the Sunday flea market, a huge Jacobs chuck. This relict has stamped on it Carpati (Carpathian). So it is an old Romanian model. I suppose this is the largest chuck made for MT3. It looks like it was used a lot but it opens/close smooth and the jaws are in very good condition. It is heavy and I like it a lot.
After every few mm I removed the drilling bit and add more paste and remove the swarf. There was a lot of swarf compressed inside. I don't know if it is ok to make such a deep the hole in one single drill.
In exchange I got an 8mm H7 reamer. It doesn't have a square tail but it still useful.