Can anyone recommend a good live and dead center.
The three I've tried on Amazon all are plated brass and the plating gets grooved out by the brass tubes and stop being true.
Thanks!
Todd, I have had the same problem. I tried a more expensive set as well, and eventually grooves still appeared in them. So I've stuck with the "cheap" stuff (well, dead centers are, its still about $30 for a simple live center).
What I do is this. I have two sets I switch between. One set I use exclusively with my TBC bushings. They have a roughened band on them, where the bushings meet the centers. I periodically sand that back using a strip of sandpaper intended for metals, contact-cemented to a popsicle stick (so that its flat, and I can maintain the angle on the center). Doesn't take much, just enough to keep it smooth and flat. I frequently check the centering of my two center's points and their spin. They seem to be true...as far as my eyes can tell. I guess if I used a dial meter, these might not be 100% perfectly true, but I believe they are good enough for turning.
I then have another set, my old original that I think came with one of my lathes...or at the very least, its about two years old. It has some groves in it from the brass tubes. I again periodically sand these back. These are my trash centers, though. So when I'm done with a batch of turning, and I am on to sanding and finishing, I switch out the centers, and use my "grooved up" ones for the sanding and finishing stuff.
I figure, why keep buying more, when they get damaged so easily? I have a couple additional sets I have not even used yet. Plan is, once the current "grooved up" set just gets too damaged to be useful, I'll toss 'em, and switch the current "bushing" set to the "grooved" set, and pull out another new set of unused dead/live centers to become my "bushing" set.
There was a time when I wondered if there was a way to create disposable 60 degree "caps" for my centers. Out of some kind of hard plastic... They would most likely be single-use, though, and it would get expensive fast. When it comes to sanding and finishing, being perfectly true isn't a real requirement, so some grooves don't matter all that much, and you can sand that mostly flat again usually. Eventually a groove may form that is too deep to be sanded out...I either just turn pens with bigger tubes for a while, or will toss the center when that happens (has happened to me once.)
