I stopped down at Lester's old time machine shop. Found Lester in the back and we jawed for a half hour or so. Eventually I mentioned I wanted some hot rolled 1-1/4" round stock to make a boring bar, and my tailstock ram with. I'm using a tailstock casting that I bought from Ebay for a Craftsman lathe. Lester said why didn't I want cold rolled? I said well the bore is actually 1-1/8" and I'm not sure how worn it is, might need to turn it to an odd dimension, etc.
He said, well, I have some 1-1/8 cold rolled. Had it for a long while. I don't use it much. Okay I said, I'll take about three feet of both, then, just in case. So he cut me the hot rolled bar, and hunted up the cold rolled, which was on a shelf in an ancient cardboard tube, that just fit it. When he pulled the bar out, it was just under 3 feet, so I said that was fine. He charged me $22, and I could probably make six tailstock rams with that if I wanted to. He gave me the cardboard tube, too.
Well when I got it home, it was all coated up with sticky preservative stuff. I cut off 7" of it and cleaned it up with kerosene. Imagine my surprise when I saw it was ground polished stock! And the fit in the tailstock was absolutely perfect. perfect sliding fit. Like they were ground for each other.
So I guess I lucked out on that one. Maybe that's why it was in that protective cardboard tube. Thank you Lester!
The ram blank in the tailstock:
