MASTERING THE LATHE—PART 9

Alive centre or dead centre that fits the tailstock of your lathe is necessary to support solid workpieces. However, you need a pipe centre to support hollow tubular items at the distant end from the lathe chuck. Without this support, a long workpiece may not be rigid enough for a good finish. Sizing may also be erratic as the workpiece is pushed away from the cutting tool. With care, you can meet the challenge to produce a pipe centre as a really worthwhile piece of equipment.

When you need a pipe centre, you might not have time to make it so my advice is to make one ahead of time.

I have drawn a simple design first as I am the sort of guy who needs a clear picture of where I am heading. First, establish the size of the Morse taper in your lathe tailstock. The inset on Morse tapers will give you some background and measurements of the different sizes. In my case it is a No. 4 Morse taper (4MT). The design uses two sealed ball bearings (61805-2RS and 61804-2RS). These are SKF numbers, but are universally recognised and can be