Getting tool on center.
There are more ways to do this than you can shake a stick it.
Last night I saw some guy make something that is a reproduction of what used to be sold buy a lathe company.
I was almost talked into making my own and realized all it was was a height gauge.
What this guy did was still use his eyeballs to make his adjustment to make the gauge.
What I did was to put a piece of steel in the lathe and turn it true and measured run out with a dial indicator there isn't any.
Then I measured the diameter.
I set my height gauge on the cross slide and measured the distance between the cross slide to the top of the round piece I had in the lathe.
I then subtracted 1/2 the diameter of that and wrote it down on the lathe with a sharpie in several places.
Turns out it is 3.781 this is dead center of any piece I put in the lathe in relation to the top of the cross slide.
Now all I have to do is set any cutting tool with this height with my gauge and I am on dead center.
Tested it with a parting tool and it works flawlessly.
I have tried everything under the sun to set center and they all involved eyesight in one way or another and parting was hit or miss.
Parting sucks if the tool isn't on dead center.
Now I dont have to struggle with it anymore.
Worth