All this talk about holding taps in hand tappers got me to go look once again at
my $79 Enco special (a fine item to use free shipping on, it being both over $50
and under 125 pounds). The first one that showed up promptly went back, don't
remember what was wrong, something egregious. Enco was cool about it, though,
had another one here quickly. It's almost perfect, but it has never retained the
tap holders in the spindle properly. Anyway, the fix turned out to be trivial.
Mine is a round flat spring steel clip holding in a ball which is supposed to
engage a detent milled in the tap holders, but the clip was just too loose. I
removed it and did a little judicious mashing in the bench vise, then (with some
difficulty) reassembled it. MUCH tighter, and it now works correctly.

These little hand tappers are absolutely the shiznits on anything you can fit in
there.

GWE

KyMike wrote:
A plain round wire, yes, and it protrudes out over the corners of the
hex very slightly. As far as I can tell it is about 1/16" diameter.
The fingers resemble 6 flat wheel spokes which overlap each other at
the center of the hex-shaped hole. If you have the ram upside down and
are looking into the end of it you will see these spokes at the bottom
end of the hole. After taking a closer look, they don't seem to have
any springiness to them at all and apparently are there only to block
the upper end of the hole so that the tap holders won't go in too far.
I may be able to get a picture of the hole if it will help, though my
digital camera is not that good with extreme closeups.

Mike