Building The Steven's Favorite

[TomG]

I finally got around to finishing up the cat heads. The one for the spindle needed a relief cut in the taper and a locking pin which I made from a 10-32 button head cap screw. It also needed a hole for a spanner wrench.



The head for the outboard end of the spindle needed to be quite large to mount over the locking ring for the collet closer so it required 4" round instead of the 3" I used for the spindle end. Too bad I didn't realize that before I cut an extra piece of 3" Both heads also needed a bunch of 5/16-24 set screws to mount them and to hold the barrel.

Here are a couple of pics showing the cat heads in place holding the barrel.



The cat head on the spindle is probably only useful to the gunsmith, but the outboard head is useful to keep long pieces of stock from getting off center and vibrating the lathe.