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Tapermate? Really? Tell the truth now

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So how many of you who turn day-in and day-out clean the Morse taper on your machine regularly? I see the Tapermate recommended now and again, but am really wondering (a) if turners actually use it and (b) if there isn't an old-fashioned (read: cheaper, low-tech) way of cleaning without scratching the inside of the taper.
 

odie

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I have one of the tapermates, but seldom use it. Usually just blow out the MT prior to using it. It does come in handy for those rare times that compressed air doesn't do the trick. Is it a worthwhile investment?......Like any special tool, it is nice to have when you need it, but it'll spend a lot of time in the drawer between times it's needed.

ko
 

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I have had many lathes including a metal lathe. The only time I clean the morse taper is during regular clean and lube sessions. Then I just use a paper towel and the same WD-40 that I clean the bed and banjo with. I just us my little finger and reach in as far as I can. On rare occasions I've used a small dowel to push the towel in further. 99% of the time I just either blow it out before inserting a taper or stick my little finger in there and wipe out any shavings. I bought a morse taper reamer at the flea mkt to fix a really old lathe that had minor rust in the quill but that's the only time I've ever used that.
 

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Well, it only needs to be cleaned if you are inserting a chuck or drive with a Morse taper shank. Usually, I will fold a paper shop towel into a triangle shape twist it and dunk it into my gallon can of DNA and then put it in the spindle socket while turning the handwheel a few turns. That will generally take care of all dust and other gunk. If the MT socket is really dirty, I might first insert my SpinLMate I don't apply anything that leaves a residue on the surface, but if you use a rust protector, I think that it would be best to clean it off before inserting a drive.
 
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I have the green spiral thing and I clean that tapers "occasionally". I clean the MT centers and mandrels more often than the socket.

I used it yesterday when I noticed some play in some brand new MT mandrels from Rubber Chucky. It didn't help. After careful measurements with a surface plate and my best Starrett instruments it appears the new mandrels have been machined incorrectly causing the wobble.

JKJ
 
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I have the green spiral thing and I clean that tapers "occasionally". I clean the MT centers and mandrels more often than the socket.

I used it yesterday when I noticed some play in some brand new MT mandrels from Rubber Chucky. It didn't help. After careful measurements with a surface plate and my best Starrett instruments it appears the new mandrels have been machined incorrectly causing the wobble.

JKJ

What model lathe do you have, John?
 
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What model lathe do you have, John?

Jamie,

I have a couple of Jet 1642s, some Jet minis, and a couple of metal lathes. I use these for playing and teaching.

As for the Rubber Chuckie aluminum mandrels, I tried them in three Jet lathes and in the MT2 tailstock of my metal-cutting lathe. The aluminum mandrels did not fit correctly in any lathe. I measured the aluminum mandrels and found the taper off by 0.008" in one inch (they all measure 0.058" per inch instead of the required 0.04995" per inch). As a comparison I tested some of my steel MT2 accessories and a hardened/precision ground MT2-1 adapter made for machining - all these were a perfect fit with zero play. I'm convinced the Rubber Chucky MT2 mandrels were not machined to the accepted standard. No big problem since I can fix them.

JKJ
 

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Jamie, I have a couple of Jet 1642s, some Jet minis, and a couple of metal lathes. I use these for playing and teaching. As for the Rubber Chuckie aluminum mandrels, I tried them in three Jet lathes and in the MT2 tailstock of my metal-cutting lathe. The aluminum mandrels did not fit correctly in any lathe. I measured the aluminum mandrels and found the taper off by 0.008" in one inch (they all measure 0.058" per inch instead of the required 0.04995" per inch). As a comparison I tested some of my steel MT2 accessories and a hardened/precision ground MT2-1 adapter made for machining - all these were a perfect fit with zero play. I'm convinced the Rubber Chucky MT2 mandrels were not machined to the accepted standard. No big problem since I can fix them. JKJ

Have you contacted Don Doyle at Rubber Chucky?
It seems you may have gotten on that was not machined properly.

I have a few of his morse taper mandrels. They have fit every lathe I have tried them in.
It has been my experience that the Rubber chuckle products work.
Also Don is Good guy and a friend.
Be interested to hear what Don Says.

Al
 
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the reminder

So how many of you who turn day-in and day-out clean the Morse taper on your machine regularly? I see the Tapermate recommended now and again, but am really wondering (a) if turners actually use it and (b) if there isn't an old-fashioned (read: cheaper, low-tech) way of cleaning without scratching the inside of the taper.


Jamie,

The reminder to clean your tapers before sticking them together is often a horrible screech of steel slipping on steel. Left too long the sound will go away, once the two pieces have galled or welded into one unit!

I clean my headstock and tailstock tapers every time I clean the machine and I clean them and whatever is going in them every time I put morse tapers together. The tapers are designed to work with a perfect fit. Anything else is asking for grief.

Gotta be kidding about buying a special toy to clean a taper though! A wooden dowel, tapered a bit or not, a piece of paper towel wrapped around it, and most anything resembling a solvent. After being satisfied things are clean then use a dry paper towel on the dowel to dry things. Make sure the dowel and paper towel fit loosely enough to run the lathe at low speeds cleaning the headstock spindle if you are as lazy as I am. Be sure you are holding something you can turn loose of if it grabs or leave the lathe off. That also means be sure the lathe rotation is towards your fingers, not your wrist! The only thing worse than getting wrapped up in machinery at high RPM is getting wrapped up in machinery at low RPM. Heard it happen in the next room once.

Hu
 
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Gotta be kidding about buying a special toy to clean a taper...
A wooden dowel...
a piece of paper towel...
solvent...
dry paper towel...
fit loosely enough...
if it grabs...
be sure the lathe rotation is...
getting wrapped up in machinery...

Kidding? The procedure you describe vs 5 seconds with a MT cleaning tool?

I think I'll stick with the toy. It works very well.

JKJ
 
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Shotgun Brush

So how many of you who turn day-in and day-out clean the Morse taper on your machine regularly? I see the Tapermate recommended now and again, but am really wondering (a) if turners actually use it and (b) if there isn't an old-fashioned (read: cheaper, low-tech) way of cleaning without scratching the inside of the taper.

A 10/12 gauge bronze bore shotgun cleaning brush works great. Check it out at http://www.gandermountain.com/modpe...-Bronze-Bore-Shotgun-Brush-410-Gauge&i=785015. - John
 
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Have you contacted Don Doyle at Rubber Chucky?
It seems you may have gotten on that was not machined properly.

I have a few of his morse taper mandrels. They have fit every lathe I have tried them in.
It has been my experience that the Rubber chuckle products work.
Also Don is Good guy and a friend.
Be interested to hear what Don Says.
Al

Oh yes, I called Don. I thought anyone would really like to know in case he was unknowingly sending out a bad run of parts.

However, he seemed quite defensive. He was insistent that all his parts are perfectly machined on a CNC machine and I must be confused about the nature of Morse tapers. But he lost me when he said I must not know much about machining if I didn't know that all Morse tapers from all manufacturers must be seated with a mallet to make them hold. Say what??

(At first he said to whack them with a wooden mallet. He changed this to a rubber mallet after he read his own printed instructions. Which yes, say you have to "seat" them with a mallet.)

Sorry, but this is not the way tapers work, either Morse, JT, or R8. Tapers rely on complete and perfect contact over the entire surface. The tapers on his mandrels only touch at the spindle opening.

OK, so I tried his suggestion and whacked one of the mandrels into the headstock with a mallet. This did take out the slop. However, after removing the mandrel and reinserting by hand, the play is still there. To use this method the mandrel would have to be pounded into the headstock for every use. No. A taper should seat every time when inserted with the fingers.

After inserting one a time or two and twisting to test, look at the horrible galling in the aluminum on the single band of contact. There is zero contact down the rest of the 1-3/8" that fits into the spindle. Again, this is not the way a taper is supposed to work:

taper_gall_2.jpg

taper_gall_2b.jpg

Taper_gall_1.jpg

As a sanity check, I checked my lathe spindles by inserting several other drive centers, live centers, precision ground and hardened MT2-MT1 adapter, taper drills, and Jacobs chucks. ALL worked perfectly and as expected in four different lathes, seating with the fingers. I applied Dykem blue to his tapers and others - this is a standard way to test tapers. His tapers show NO contact except at the point of galling shown above. An expert machinist confirmed my findings.

I checked the Rubber Chucky aluminum mandrels on three wood lathes and one metal-cutting lathe. I also tried inserting them into a precision hardened and ground MT3-MT2 adapter. His mandrels are absolutely wobbly in all cases. Measuring with my surface plate and good Starrett instruments revealed the taper is 0.058" per inch, way off specification of 0.04995" per inch, way too small at the small end. What is worse, the sides of each taper are not even flat - holding them against a (Starrett) straight edge revealed a slight bulge in the middle of the taper. I can actually feel the bulge with my calibrated fingers. Sorry, Don, ain't no way these are going to seat as delivered!

When I told him that I saw 0.006" play at 2.2" from the headstock spindle he said that is nothing when working in wood. However, this translates in to a LOT of play at the end of the long mandrel! Of course, under compression of the tailstock the run-out might be high but there might not be any wobble. I gave up trying to explain what I found. It is easier to just fix them myself and get back to playing with the lathe.

Here's what I think - his parts may have been fine for run after run. Now there is a small error in the machining, perhaps from some setup error or wear in the machine or who knows. Since the previous runs have been perfect, he is so sure that these are perfect that he sees no need to check them. He said I could send them back but since they are all the same I would get back the same thing. (Maybe I shouldn't expect all that much for a mere $300.) I'm not about to tell this guy how to run his business but I hope after my call that he at least checks the machining on his latest batch.

JKJ
 
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Kidding? The procedure you describe vs 5 seconds with a MT cleaning tool?

I think I'll stick with the toy. It works very well.

JKJ
Normally, I'd probably agree but I recently used up 3 months worth of tool money when a local turner was liquidating his shop. Want to keep the new spindle spiffy-clean, but will use the time-consuming technique for now.:rolleyes:
 
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Oh yes, I called Don. I thought anyone would really like to know in case he was unknowingly sending out a bad run of parts.

However, he seemed quite defensive. [Snip]
View attachment 9270

View attachment 9269

View attachment 9271


JKJ

Wow, not good! Contrast with my Beall experience. Their 3-wheel buffing mandrel didn't seat totally in my lathe, so I called and talked to Mr. Beall. Quick decision to just send me a new mandrel. (Turns out the problem is in the spindle, not the Beall part) Sounds like Don isn't aware of how expensive it is to replace a dissatisfied customer compared to keeping that customer happy.:p
 
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Sounds like Don isn't aware of how expensive it is to replace a dissatisfied customer compared to keeping that customer happy.:p

Oh, just to be clear neither the bad mandrels the phone discussion don't make me a dissatisfied customer. Even his loud opinion of my ability to measure and diagnose the problem didn't insult me - the gentleman certainly doesn't know me. I'm sure he simply didn't understand just how bad they are. If they were bad and I COULDN'T fix them, yes, I would not be mellow about it!

As it is, I feel more concerned about him than me. The product is good, the engineering and plastic materials seem fine. I've been making various custom supports for years as needed and usually can't reuse them. The Rubber Chucky system is about as close to a universal "custom" turning support as I can imagine.

After I fix the mandrels I expect to get a great deal of use from the system. But if others in the past got good mandrels, either I'm the only one who got three sizes of mandrels with identically bad tapers (very unlikely), or he has a batch of bad mandrels (highly likely)!

Perhaps he will discover what went wrong and correct it before a bunch of them go out. If he can fix the problem, I would certainly recommend them to others. Until then, all I can do is document the problem and alert others.

JKJ
 
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After I fix the mandrels I expect to get a great deal of use from the system.

John,
As an armchair machinist (OK, i do use a metal lathe for some projects but am not expert by any means), I wonder how well aluminum holds up as a taper. It seems there is a woodturning cottage industry of faceplates, tapers, etc. using aluminum because it’s very easy to work and is inexpensive. There must be a reason aluminum tapers are not used in the machinist community… I’d guess it has to do with a combination of accuracy, grinding, and wear characteristics.

Oh, I just thought about using a knock-out bar on an aluminum taper — I’d think it would mushroom pretty quickly and even distort if the taper is seated really well.
 

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I don't think I could be as forgiving JKJ........

Money is very tight, and I can't afford to waste it. I'd request a refund, or a replacement that's machined right.

You might also invite Don to participate in this thread........

ko
 
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I wonder how well aluminum holds up as a taper. It seems there is a woodturning cottage industry of faceplates, tapers, etc. using aluminum because it’s very easy to work and is inexpensive. There must be a reason aluminum tapers are not used in the machinist community… I’d guess it has to do with a combination of accuracy, grinding, and wear characteristics.
Oh, I just thought about using a knock-out bar on an aluminum taper — I’d think it would mushroom pretty quickly and even distort if the taper is seated really well.

I thought about the knock-out bar issue as I was extracting the mandrel after "seating" it with the mallet. The end of the taper is drilled and threaded for a drawbar. Seems like it might not take much abuse to make a drawbar unusable. A solution could be to put a steel bolt into the hole to protect it from the knock-out bar. I personally don't plan to use a drawbar on these. (I do use one on a Jacobs chuck when holding tiny things for turning.)

Now that you mentioned it, I have never seen an aluminum taper before now. All that I have are steel, some hardened. Beall does it right with their buffing mandrels. The mandrels are aluminum but the MT is steel, held in the mandrel with a couple of set screws.

The Rubber Chucky mandrels must work ok in general. Rudy Lopez, demonstrator at the TAW this year, has used them extensively (his recommendation and demo was the reason I bought some). I hope to get with Rudy sometime later this year - I'll ask him how his have held up.

I'm sure we've all see even steel tapers that were scarred, galled, and badly scratched. I've seen spur drive centers deformed badly where someone has probably hammered the wood into the spur while the center is in the headstock spindle. (Never do that!! At minimum, not good for the bearings.) Fortunately, an abused drive center seems less of a potential problem than a long mandrel, since even if the center is sloppy the error would be small since the working distance is very short.

When I have a choice, I always buy precision ground hardened steel tapers, especially for adapters (to minimize compounding errors). I have a bunch of MT2 and MT1 taper drills and I know some of them are hardened. (BTW, if someone doesn't know about taper drill bits they are a dream on a lathe, both for accuracy and for limited bed length mini lathes, since no Jacobs chuck is needed.)

As for the bad aluminum tapers, I can fix them, either by re-machining the taper or by cutting a relief in the center then carefully filing the outer ring while turning. (I always relieve the center of tapers I cut in wood so I can use the headstock spindle as a jam chuck - this forgives a lot in wood.) If I find some time (ha!) I may even machine new mandrels from steel - the threads would be easy to cut and a taper is not that hard to get right since I have a calculator. :)

JKJ
 
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depends on how you operate . . .

Kidding? The procedure you describe vs 5 seconds with a MT cleaning tool?

I think I'll stick with the toy. It works very well.

JKJ



John,

The makers of toys do need those who like to fill their shops with them. I bought my share when I was young. Most of them hung on the wall until somebody came along and I gave them away.

I did turn a dedicated tapered dowel for cleaning the tapers in my spindles. Used it today for the first time in I don't know when. It was the first thing handy when I needed a live center extension to put pressure in the bottom of a deep bowl while mounting it in a chuck. Guess I should have drug out the catalogs, I'm sure somebody makes a live center extension I could have bought instead of using a low tech piece of wood I had laying around.

Hu
 
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John,
The makers of toys do need those who like to fill their shops with them. I bought my share when I was young. Most of them hung on the wall until somebody came along and I gave them away.
I did turn a dedicated tapered dowel for cleaning the tapers in my spindles. Used it today for the first time in I don't know when. It was the first thing handy when I needed a live center extension to put pressure in the bottom of a deep bowl while mounting it in a chuck.

I don't know of a very long extension, although there are some precision MT2-MT2 adapters that would extend the live center maybe 5" extra inches. I'd probably do the wood thing you mentioned.

But I'm curious, how do you proceed to turn a deep bowl such that it needs inside support from the tailstock - do you turn the inside first? I almost always turn the outside of things first then reverse, chuck, and turn the inside. Or do you mean you use this to finish turn rough-turned bowls?

As for toys... Yes, my shop, farm, barn, equipment and storage buildings, and house are full of toys - wood lathes, flat wood shop, milling machine/metal lathe toys, welding shop, plasma cutter, sharpening machines, electronics bench, photography studio, hydraulic toys, vehicle maintenance toys, tractor with attachable toys, bobcat, backhoe, sawmill, horses, trailers, diesel mowers, firing range playground, cave-diving scuba gear, pianos, synthesizers, guitars, horns, video editing studio, lasers, telescopes, microscopes, Kindles, computer toys,... Difference might be I use these toys (except I've quit the cave diving).

Every day is play day!

JKJ
 
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Simple solution

So how many of you who turn day-in and day-out clean the Morse taper on your machine regularly? I see the Tapermate recommended now and again, but am really wondering (a) if turners actually use it and (b) if there isn't an old-fashioned (read: cheaper, low-tech) way of cleaning without scratching the inside of the taper.

I turn my own out of a soft wood and slightly long and this allows me to wrap with a thin cloth or paper towel, add a bit of denatured alcohol and clean as needed. It has worked for the past 20 plus years, cheap, and simple.
 
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I turn my own out of a soft wood and slightly long and this allows me to wrap with a thin cloth or paper towel, add a bit of denatured alcohol and clean as needed. It has worked for the past 20 plus years, cheap, and simple.
Sensible! Also sounds like micro-practice for the French rolling pin I want to turn.;);) Thanks.
 
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This thread has me thinking of making something close enough to the taper for cleaning. I use my dry finger before inserting anything, and occasionally WD-40 on a paper towel for cleaning and some rust prevention. Interesting thoughts above, and JKJ you are lucky that's an easy fix for you. I'm with Odie though. It would go right back.

Doug
 
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micro-practice for the French rolling pin I want to turn.;);)

Oh, I love making those! And twice so far I've had kids, both 10 years old, "make" them as Christmas presents for their mothers. The kids got to pick out the wood, measure, mark, try holding a roughing gouge, sand a bit, and rub on oil. They were both so proud of themselves!

jaden_img_1254.jpg
Jaden makes a present.

rolling_pins_five.jpg
The bottom one in this picture is Dogwood, my favorite for rolling pins. Hard to find though. Just today I cut a bunch of dogwood blanks sized for future rolling pins, probably after at least 5 years of air drying!

JKJ
 
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...and JKJ you are lucky that's an easy fix for you. I'm with Odie though. It would go right back.

I actually made the call with the intent of sending them back for a quick replacement. Bad batch, sorry, end of discussion.

That was right up to the point where the guy said yes, send them back but I would get the same thing sent back to me since they were all exactly the same (and all perfectly machined, of course.) At that point I just gave up and told him thanks, but I would just fix them myself. I decided that arguing the point would have been like trying to reason with one of those pre-recorded telephone messages. I have more productive things to do.

JKJ
 
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That Dogwood looks a lot like some Beech I have set aside for rolling pins.

I am often surprised by what I find in dogwood. Often the wood is a creamy white, sometimes with a pinkish cast, the heart is dark brown, and occasionally there is striking color. One log I cut yesterday had some striking red, orange, and brown in some areas. The crotch flame is spectacular.

Dogwood is one of my favorites for turning - it is heavy, hard, strong, very fine-grained, and often needs little or no sanding. It also machines beautifully on the milling machine. Traditionally used for things that got a lot of handling like shuttles for looms, it is supposed to get smoother with handling. Warps like crazy! It's almost impossible to buy commercially - most of what I'm using now is from downed trees on my farm and has been air-drying for almost 10 years. Since many people have never even tried it, I've passed out pieces at club meetings and often stick a piece or two in the box if I'm shipping something to another woodturner.

I use it for finials, boxes, small bowls, goblets, magic wands, finger tops, pens, conductor's batons, tool handles, pepper grinders, rolling pins, billy clubs, dibbles, ornaments, spinning wheel parts, kitchen gadgets, knobs, shop jigs, push sticks, and firewood!

http://www.wood-database.com/lumber-identification/hardwoods/dogwood/

JKJ
 
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Oh heck, I have one of those and use it frequently, but I've had it a long time and I know I didn't pay anywhere near 20 bucks for it.
Thanks.
As a matter of fact, I have a #3 that I can't use anymore if anyone is interested.
 

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Ditto Odie. I do have a metal lathe but my skills aren't up to turning a really accurate morse taper. On the use of aluminum I know that Bestwoodtools does make aluminum parts but adds steel morse tapers to those parts. I agree I don't think an aluminum morse taper would handle forces very long before galling.
When installing a morse taper into a drill press the first time you might need to use a mallet or at least put a lot of pressure on it. After that you should never have to touch it. On wood lathes nothing more than a hard push should do the job.
 
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I just use a small nylon bottle brush with a small amount of wd40 to clean. Before using I wrap a popsicle stick in a little bit of paper towel to remove any excess oil.

In the "an ounce of prevention is worth....:
Lightly insert a fishing cork in the MT, it does not interfere with my chucks or faceplates. On the handwheel side a cork form a wine bottle fits fine and easy to pull out. Again, the operative word is lightly.
 
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I have one and use it all the time, primarily on my midi lathe because it's got a swiveling head.

After I've found a hole I drilled on the lathe a little off center for calls or pens I find the headstock needs just a little alignment adjustment.

I check the alignment between the tailstock and headstock a couple times a week with a steel double ended MT2 alignment tool, but before I use that tool I clean both tapers with the tapermate.

I use it on my big lathe too, but primarily only during maintenance.

Happy turning - Tom
 

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Lightly insert a fishing cork in the MT, it does not interfere with my chucks or faceplates. On the handwheel side a cork form a wine bottle fits fine and easy to pull out. Again, the operative word is lightly.

Using corks to plug the MT access is a good method of keeping dust and debris out. These days, I always remove my tailstock when not in use, but I did use corks when I left it on the lathe.....:D

-----odie-----
 
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I have one and use it all the time, primarily on my midi lathe because it's got a swiveling head.

After I've found a hole I drilled on the lathe a little off center for calls or pens I find the headstock needs just a little alignment adjustment.

I check the alignment between the tailstock and headstock a couple times a week with a steel double ended MT2 alignment tool, but before I use that tool I clean both tapers with the tapermate.

I use it on my big lathe too, but primarily only during maintenance.

Happy turning - Tom
I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here, Tom. The "Tapermate" is a green, spiral-shaped polyurethane "stick" that sold to clean out the taper on a lathe. See this page. Are you referring to the double-ended tapers that are used to align headstock and tailstock?
 

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Jamie is correct. The tapermate is for cleaning a morse taper. The double end morse taper is for aligning the headstock and tailstock.
 
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