Need troubleshooting help

[Hippie3180]

With our very recent delve into kitless we are experiencing a small issue with our section being slightly off center from the body barrel, it's very minuscule but noticeable. Here's the scoop.

We use our lathe chuck to hold our body/section to drill out for our converter (we don't have a collet yet)

We do use a center drill

Our lathe headstock/tailstock are aligned

We don't have a tenon cutter for single start threads, we cut them ourselves…could our tenon cause this very small offset where body and section meet?

Is our drilling off somehow? There is a bit of movement in our tailstock left to right..is this the issue?

Thank you for your thoughts.

 

[duncsuss]

You might be right about the tailstock - especially suspect if it can twist as well as shift. Another tailstock-related source of error is the Morse taper quill being loose - I was told to tighten the bolt which locks the crank and back it off just enough to allow it to drill but still be hard to turn.

I haven't noticed it being a problem since I changed my order of operations - now I do the final sizing/shaping of the section with it screwed into the barrel. It shifts any sign of them being off-axis to the nib end of the section.

 

[Displaced Canadian]

Is it just off center or is it crooked? These things can make you pull your hair out chasing them down. It's possible the bit may be wandering if it isn't sharp.

 

[Hippie3180]

Is it just off center or is it crooked? These things can make you pull your hair out chasing them down. It's possible the bit may be wandering if it isn't sharp.

Well now, that's a possibility. The section/body is ever so slightly off center, if you look down the pen you can see they are off by a hair. I always seem to have a bit of trouble with my 5/16 wandering just a bit. Hmm?