***UPDATE 2/9/09***

The taper attachment has been built and it works perfectly. I
chose the full bed length design for two reasons:
1. It is simpler to make and after all the lathe is pretty short.

2. 28.648" taper attachment arm yields exactly .500" per degree movement at the 
slotted end. With a 20TPI screw you can dial in the taper pretty accurately with 
10 turns per degree, each turn equal to .1° and with 100 divisions on a dial you 
can directly dial in to .1/100 or .001° per division. For example: #2 MT would 
require 14 turns plus 30 full marks on the dial with an additional .7 of a mark 
to yield a 1.4307° cutting angle. The distance to set over for a #2MT is .7153" if you chose to simply measure the distance to move the arm.

I created a spreadsheet "Taper Attachment.xls" that is useful for any taper 
attachment design. The default entries are for #0 Morse Taper, but you can enter 
any taper per foot you want and it will give you the 1/2 angle in decimal 
degrees and degrees, minutes, seconds format. It also computes how far the arm 
will need to move to set the required cutting angle.


The pivot mount for the "Head-End" of the attachment turned out to be really simple. A 6"x6"x1/4" steel plate was scarfed out with an arc to clear the spindle, and the two chip shield mounting holes were used to mount the plate to the head. A 3/4"x3/4x5.75" square stock was bolted to the plate to provide a pivot up over the motor. My pivot is 6-3/8" away from the rear machined edge of the ways.

You have to unbolt the crossfeed mount to utilize the taper attachment. The compound topslide is used to control the depth of cut.

Regards,
Rich DeMartile