Well, okay, this fix took longer than 5 minutes but it was free and will make a huge improvement in the rigidity of your lathe.
As usual I didn't measure anything, I just started making chips and improvised as I went along. YMMV
This is the tailstock side of my carriage. We are looking at the new gib screws that I installed tonight. The problem is that 3 screws are not enough, especially when you are working with the crossfeed cranked in very far. I found this out when I started using the rear tool post and realized that there were just 2 screws holding the gib.
The first thing I did was look in my screws and nuts collection for replacements for the factory screws. I have a large box of 8-32 buttonheads but no 8-32 nuts. Oh well, I drilled out some smaller ones I had on hand and ran an 8-32 tap through them. I set my crossfeed up in the mill vise and laid a nut over one of the existing holes, and as I suspected, it was going to hang down too far and would not work. Oh well, I drilled the new holes high enough up that the nut would clear the top of the carriage and tapped them. I put lockwashers on in front of the nuts to give a little better grip and left the screws long enough to get a wrench on behind them. Funny thing about the factory nuts is they are 7mm across the flats but you don't get a 7mm wrench with the lathe.
Oh well, the new nuts are 8mm and I got TWO of those wrenches with the lathe.
You can see the three original screw holes. I will be putting the original screws back in them, with a bit of red LocTite, and sanding them down flush tomorrow to keep the swarf out. The long SHCS in the middle is an improvised lock I added while I was working on it...seemed like a good time to do it. Oh yeah, don't forget to drill some dimples in the gib in the new hole locations. Now go fix your lathe.
