Lathe taper attachment

Morse taper tooling has various lengths and features on the small end. Seems like most of the older ones have tangs of a standard length. There are also lots of oddball shorter lengths out there. Before tapping a new MT tool into your tailstock arbor, make sure it will eject first, or you might be sorry when you want to take it out. If the taper is not ejecting, there is often an adjustable screw in the center of the quill handle for adjusting the contact point of ejection, which 'might' reach the tool. Still, if you make the adjustment fit your shortest tools, then your longest tools will not be able to get deep enough to seat. An easy workaround is to push an appropriate length of round stock into the quill before installing the tool, as a spacer. If it is the correct length you will be able to seat the tool and also eject it after use. You will have to fish the spacer out after removing the tool, but it will be loose, not stuck, and it is downhill toward the exit. A small magnet on a stick will pull it right out. Another thing you will notice is that longer shanks will give you an effectively shorter quill travel...
 
Its the end of the tailstock lead screw that ejects the morse taper arbor.
 
The quill on my TS has a scale of 4'' inches marked on it to show quill extension.
The quill has to be sticking out of the TS at least 1'' for a tanged arbor to seat leaving only 3'' of travel left. On an arbor without a tang the quill only has to be sticking out around 1/4'' for the arbor to seat. Both will seat well and both will eject if the quill is retracted back to zero but the tanged one will eject sooner.
Since the tang is useless on my lathe and it effectively reduces useable travel of the quill I cut the tang off.

If your TS does not have the same ejection feature towards the end of its travel, but rather has a slot in the quill that is exposed when fully extended, then you need to leave the tang on the arbor so that you can use a tapered drift to break the taper. In this case there should be no reduction in useable quill travel but heed the caution in Bob's post above.
 
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