Help! MT2 And Drill Chuck Flew Out Of Tailstock

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pauly99

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Last evening I received chuck jaws from PSI so I was looking forward to practicing drilling blanks on some scrap wood which had been cut to size. The chuck jaws nicely screw/thread into the headstock and the drill chuck with MT 2 sits in the tailstock. All was going smoothly as I moved the tailstock with drill bit in and out of the wood held in the jaws. Then a wobble of what looked like the MT2 in the tailstock and by the time I could reach over and turn off the lathe, I was biffed by something in the faceshield and the MT2 went flying. :eek: How do I secure the MT2 in the drill chuck and in the tailstock so that this does not happen again?
 
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Simply stated - with your hand. You need to make sure the morse taper stays seated when you withdraw the tailstock or retract the ram. Once you get into the habit, you will do it without even thinking about it.
 
There will always be a threat of this happening since there is not constant pressure forcing the drill chuck to stay in the MT slot. I hold the drill chuck with a gloved hand. No more flying chuck with sharp drill bit coming at my face.
 
This typically happens when you are withdrawing the bit from the drilled piece. It can catch and pull the M2 out of the tail stock. Like Roger said above, always keep one hand on the drill chuck and you shouldn't have this problem.
 
Yes, one hand on the chuck. But, additionally, keep pressure on the chuck, pushing the MT into its "hole" so that your drill starts drilling straight and continues to drill straight.
 
Hold it by hand will work. If you want more security, many MT tools have a thread in the small end, that is for a draw bar. Get a piece of all-thread of the correct thread, cut off a section long enough to go through the tail stock and secure the MT tool in place with the all-thread, some washers and a nut.

I grabbed an image off google that shows the idea. It is important to use this when using unsupported MT tools on the headstock, but can be useful of the tailstock too.

If the joint between the MT-JT adapter and the jacobs chuck comes loose, you need to drive it in harder; use a bigger hammer.
 

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Also remember your tail stock when cranked, all the way back, well push the drill chuck out. At least on every lathe I have had does. That is so you can remove the drill chuck or whatever else you may have in there. Do not crank it all the way back while you are drilling. Hold the chuck and don't crank the tail stock all the way back and it should stay in place.
 
As others have said, you have to hold the chuck with your hand when it is in the tailstock and you are drilling. You want to do this for two reasons. First, that will assure that when you back the bit out of the wood, you actually back the bit out of the wood and not back the chuck out of the tailstock. Second, that will stabilize the bit and assure that you drill clean, centered hole.

The other thing you need to understand is that the chuck you bought from PSI has a shaft with TWO tapers - an MT2 (in your case) that fits into your lathe, and a J33 taper that attaches the shaft to the chuck itself. What that means is that there are two ways that the chuck can detach from the tailstock - either the MT2 can slip out of the tailstock taper, or the J33 can slip out of the chuck taper.

Finally, you can also use the Jacobs chuck in your headstock. The MT2 is threaded to accept a drawrod to hold it in the headstock taper. But when you do that, you need to understand that even though the MT2 is held tightly in place, you can still dislodge that J33 taper.
 
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Thank you for all of the replies. Haynie.... you nailed it. The faceshield was the best investment to date. I will darn well make sure that the taper is secure in both the tailstock and chuck before I touch it next time (tonight). It looks like holding the drill chuck and then keeping pressure to keep it in the hole will be the way to go. Do I have to worry about any spinning parts catching me?

The tailstock was forward but that didn't seem to matter and while the drill bit was in the wood, everything was being held stable. When I backed it out for perhaps the 5th or 6th time, that is when things started to shake. So it makes complete sense to hold the chuck in place and push/hold the whole darn thing into the tailstock. I especially like the idea of the draw bar and I'm going to think about how to best do that... knowing that I still don't want the taper to separate from the chuck while drilling.
 
pauly99 said:
Thank you for all of the replies. Haynie.... you nailed it. The faceshield was the best investment to date. I will darn well make sure that the taper is secure in both the tailstock and chuck before I touch it next time (tonight). It looks like holding the drill chuck and then keeping pressure to keep it in the hole will be the way to go. Do I have to worry about any spinning parts catching me?

The tailstock was forward but that didn't seem to matter and while the drill bit was in the wood, everything was being held stable. When I backed it out for perhaps the 5th or 6th time, that is when things started to shake. So it makes complete sense to hold the chuck in place and push/hold the whole darn thing into the tailstock. I especially like the idea of the draw bar and I'm going to think about how to best do that... knowing that I still don't want the taper to separate from the chuck while drilling.
Click to expand...

Although you CAN use a draw bar to hold the chuck in the tail stock, you will limit yourself to only being able to slide the entire tail stock to drill your blank; you won't be able to use the ram. The first drawback is control - you can easily push too hard and ruin and expensive blank with too much pressure. Secondly, you run the risk of not drilling straight. Unless your tail stock has NO run out, than you increase the chance of drilling the hole eccentrically. Its not to say that you CAN'T advance the bit in this way, but you may want to start the hole with just advancing the ram. Better still, use a centering bit advanced by the ram.
 
The MT2 shaft on a jacob's chuck should not normally pull out of the tailstock unless you are letting too much material build up inside the flutes of the drill bit. After doing a lot of drilling I've gotten where I don't feel the need to hold my chuck by hand anymore. I've learned about how many turns of the tailstock I can do without too much material build up and you can watch how the shavings are ejecting and there's also experience with learning how the bit will sound. Sometimes you can listen and know when you need to back it out.
 
Thanks Pianoman. I will be in the market for a new bit as half of it stayed in the chuck and the other half, I'm not quite sure. I need to find a good video on showing the install of the chuck/MT into each other and into the tailstock. Besides that I will be holding on to the chuck.

I'm thinking of using a hammer as bradh mentioned to make sure the taper and chuck are together as one and do not pull apart so easily as I'm able to do by hand.

I did drill slowly and pulled out every I dunno... quarter inch or so.
 
It IS possible that you retracted your tailstock quill far enough to make the MT disengage, you know. On my lathe, it is about .75" BEFORE the "zero" mark. IF you go past that point the accessory is released.
 
Ed, you may be correct. I will triple check on that tonight. As an aside, not only was I stupid but I get the luxury of paying for a new windshield on my wife's car. Yes, the MT2 shot off and hit the windshield with such force that it shattered the glass, with glass entering the car.
 
I've read your description several times and one comment has to be made:
There should not be "drive" when you are retracting the drill bit and quill. Release the tail stock lock, pull back the tailstock while holding the chuck into the tailstock. THEN, once you have the drill bit clear of the spinning blank, THEN retract it with the tailstock quill handle.
 
As Louie said make sure the taper on the arbor is the correct one for the chuck and both the chuck taper and arbor are perfectly clean with no dirt or burrs on them, and depending on the chuck you have it should be marked with the taper on the body. either J33, J6, or J3. you should not need to hammer them together.
 
The end result on all of this was that I had "released" the MT2 from the tailstock by bringing it back too much. Thanks Ed! I made sure that I did have the correct taper for the tailstock and made sure that the packing oil was removed. When I finally set this up correctly, I'm not able to grab the drill chuck and pull it out of the tailstock. However, I've learned a valuable lesson here. That is the faceshield is an absolute must whenever this lathe is operating, hold on to the chuck while drilling to doubly make sure it doesn't come out of the tailstock, and remove the wife's car from the garage when operating the lathe (ouch... that was a $289 replacement of a windshield).
 
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