Sheldon 11-inch lathe progress - Part II: Tailstock Threads, Chuck Key

I've been able to check two things off my to-do list for the Sheldon lathe. The first item was the tailstock threads that felt sub par. They were very rough to the feel and the threaded screw felt bent.

In the photo above, the center piece appears to be cast iron and is the threaded insert that fits into the tailstock spindle. A set screw is supposed to hold the insert in place in the spindle but the angled set screw threads in the spindle were messed up beyond repair, and as you can see, the insert has also seen better days. I simply super-glued the insert back into the spindle to hold it in place. I probably should have used Loctite but didn't have any on hand. While I had the tailstock screw out, I chucked it up in the lathe and checked runout, which was almost 1/4-inch, so I was able to straighten the screw out to get the majority of runout taken care of. When everything was apart I also dumped out all the leftover chunks of junk that were rattling around inside the tailstock.

The second item I worked on was a new key for the 4-jaw chuck. The lathe came with both a 3- and 4-jaw chuck but only came with a key to fit the 3-jaw. I patterned one for the 4-jaw after the 3-jaw key. Here is the final product.

I was fortunate to have a mill on my Smithy Granite 1340 lathe that I put to work to make the flats in the key. If I didn't have a mill, my second choice would have been to weld a piece of 1/4-inch square stock to a piece of round stock but the 1/4-inch stock was a little too sloppy in the square holes in the chuck, so using the mill I was able to make the key fit snugly into the chuck.